Afterlife
by 11x20
Summary: Post SH4. Eileen awakens from a vivid, terrifying nightmare only to find herself alone in a desolate world. A killer follows close behind, calling her back into his twisted game. She knows she must find Henry, she must escape. Revised to current chapter.
1. 01

**From 11x20 [July 27, 2009]:**  
Major updates: Chapters 0, 1, and 2 revised.

After going back over these chapters I decided that I could write this mother better. Chapter "0" is now going to be Chapter "1", so everything afterward will be revised. The plot will stay the same, so if you've already read these chapters and don't really care to read them again, no worries, you're not missing much. But newcomers will be treated to a more polished version of the first few chapters. Updates will resume once I'm done editing all this.

Critique is love, I'm always looking to improve my writing. Any tossed this way will be met with crazy appreciation. Thank you for reading, everyone!

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**1.**

…_I'm alive…_

Eileen Galvin's apartment was illuminated by a thin ray of light. The cold, but gentle glow cast faint light on the flood of moss-green furniture and occasional surreal painting hanging on the wall. At the center of the room, an unconscious Eileen lay prone on the floor. A nightmare had her desperate mind trapped like a struggling deer in a tar pit.

Her mascara smeared as tears spilled through her tightly shut lashes. Her breathing suddenly hitched up, and her fingers began to twitch. The wall dividing dreams and reality that had been torn down so viciously before was being rebuilt. Soon, she would be on the side of the wall which demons could never set foot.

A soft cry escaped her lips at first, before she bolted up, eyes wild with fear.

"GET AWAY!"

Her awakening, her triumphant leap over that great wall left her trembling. She scoured the area around her for the assailant from her nightmare, screaming,

There was no trace of the man with the long blue coat. Her breaths growing steady, she pulled her knees close to her body. .Eileen found herself eying her living room—that killer could be anywhere, she thought, feeling each shadow taking his form. Her nerves were hot with adrenaline and around every corner she expected to see that man's dirty, blood-stained face gazing at her with lifeless eyes and a grin. But he was nowhere to be seen… the deer had truly pulled itself from the deep tar pit, and that great wall stood between she and anything that threatened her in dreams.

Despite her triumphant victory, she only found the strength to sob. The world within that dream could only be recalled in fragments. Yet it had been a terrifying place that the real world deteriorated into seamlessly. What happened the night before? There was a party… she picked out that short, purple dress and worked up the courage to invite her neighbor… _Henry_, she thought with a comforting fondness. When she heard someone knocking at her front door, she couldn't help but smile and hope it was Henry by some coincidental chance.

Was that moment, when she had opened the door with an excited smile, the moment that the wall crumbled?

The third floor hallway was empty. With an irritated sigh, doorbell-ditchers came to mind and Eileen closed the door. Returning to her living room, she saw him standing there. A man with sandy hair and an unkempt, bloodstained face towered over her. Before she could even scream, the invader attacked her.

The rest of the nightmare was some strange blur that made her split with pain when she tried to analyze it. The man had not been a burglar or a rapist, but she remembered the powerlessness and fear she felt beneath his fists. She did not even know the man, yet he was bent on beating her to a pulp. He beat her down with the fury of a maniac who had been wronged one too many times to keep the rage of a lifetime bottled up any longer.

Eileen remembered fighting for her life, but being brought down quickly. Before long, she was on the ground in fractures and bruises, certain that she was going to die. Yet something stopped the man… the sound of a crying little boy, begging him to stop hurting her. Without question, the attacker was gone. Eileen remembered looking up at the little boy who saved her life. His eyes were almost hollow, as if he were a boy that had never once experienced happiness. That child was alone, searching for his mother, Eileen knew. The boy's sorrow was still very vivid in her mind.

The brutal thrashing she received in her nightmare had sent her to the hospital. For the remainder of the experience she hobbled around in a heavy cast, bandages, and an aching, bloody body.

Eileen looked down at her body, letting relief wash over her as she found only smudges of lipstick on her forearm and a dried mascara stain on the rug. Despite the otherwise _normal_ state of her body, something still ached inside of her. Without even going to the party, she was waking up feeling as though she had been hit by a train.

She wiped her tears away with a sigh and tried not to think about that unusually detailed dream. Often, she dreamt about returning to old places she had visited in the past. Other times, she found herself flying over a lake, or even wandering around in an endless library.

"Hey, Eileen! Just callin' to see if you were going to stop by, we're waiting for you!" Lindsay's voice bounced from her answering machine. Eileen smiled at her friend's call. She could hear the loud rhythmic bass of the party's music in the background. It was the only message on her answering machine, from about 11 PM the night before.

Calling her back would do little good… With a glance at the kitchen clock, she saw that it was still seven in the morning… knowing Lindsay, she was either hung over or still passed out on a couch. It brought a much-needed laugh to Eileen as she wiped away any remaining tears

"Jesus… what a nightmare." Eileen sighed aloud.

A hot shower was in order, Eileen thought. The smeared makeup and the feeling of being smudged with dirt and grime seemed to crawl across her skin. In reality, she had not stepped outside since that trip to the store down the street. But unconsciously remembering that dream brought glimpses of running through the woods, following Henry out of some kind of hell. She felt like she had run a marathon.

_That's right… Henry was there. Henry had come for me in a hospital. We were… escaping the hospital? But it kept on going. It became a forest, it became a series of buildings, it even became our own apartment._

Eileen stepped into her bathroom after finding new clothes and a fresh towel.

_But what the hell happened after that? I remember following that little boy..._

In that nightmare, she had followed Henry through grisly worlds smattered with rust and grime. The scent of blood and decay remained strong in her mind. Everything had been cold, and her body ached from the damages inflicted by that man—he had been a fanatic cultist and a killer. Together, she and Henry fought desperately to escape the world he had crafted by some supernatural means.

As more and more came to mind, a small and illogical part of her mind began to question the reality of that experience. What had become of that little boy? What had become of that maniac with the long blue coat?

She shook the memories from her mind. Dwelling on it so deeply was going to get her nowhere. After finishing up her shower she changed into a long-sleeved, cotton shirt and some denim Capri pants. April mornings usually started a bit chilly in Ashfield, but warmed up by the afternoon. There were errands that had to be run—groceries, an electricity bill that lay obnoxiously upon her kitchen counter waiting to be paid, and a few books she had been meaning to pick up at the library.

She toweled dry her short chestnut hair and combed it smooth. She stuffed the small, purple wallet she had kept since high school into her pocket and picked her keys out of the violet purse upon her counter.

Eileen was ready to forget the dream and return to her life. There was too much irony in being free of that world, yet still trapped mentally. Locking the apartment door behind her, she stepped out into the third floor hallway and cast a glance in the direction of Room #302.

Henry Townshend, the kind man in her dream who had protected her from the nightmare's unworldly creatures was in reality, a soft-spoken hermit of a man. Eileen only really knew his face and had exchanged the usual greetings and small conversations when they crossed paths in the hallways. Their meetings were brief, but still, she found herself dwelling on him. He had lived there for a few years, either holed up in his apartment or away for days, taking photos and writing.

He had once told her about a visit to the nearby resort town of Silent Hill, sounding more interested in the scenery and history of the town than anyone else she had ever spoken to. It was a short chat. Upon realizing how deep into their talk he had fallen, he abruptly nodded and said, "Well, I need to get back to work. You have a good day, Eileen."

Without a missed beat, he had disappeared into his apartment.

He was strange, she thought, but cute. For a moment she felt immense regret about missing that party. She had wanted to stop by Henry's apartment and ask on the spur of the moment if he would be up to going to that party with her. Lindsay had suggested the idea to Eileen—a first move that she had thought about and rehearsed in her mind for days.

She knew that she was more likely to be shot down in his passive but kind,

"I'm sorry, I'm really not up for it. Thanks, though, Eileen."

Although… just knowing she tried was a first step to knowing more about this reclusive Henry Townshend.

The hallway was dim, and the air was starting to thicken. Eileen began to think back to the nightmare.

Henry had been in danger, alone with that maniac… had he come out alright? She shook her head and forced a smile, of course he was alright—Henry was right there in his apartment. That was a dream, this was reality.

_I must be really losing it if I'm worrying about things that happened in my nightmare…_

Eileen took slow steps toward the door of Room #302. No matter how she tried to reassure herself that it was all some horrible fantasy, the closer she got to the door, the heavier the air felt.

_If everything that happened was a dream, then… I still don't even know you, Henry…_

In the dream, Henry had told her he was locked inside his apartment, with no way out. He explained that no matter how loud he cried out for help, and no matter how hard he tried to break the windows, he was locked in by some otherworldly force. Henry was surrounded by inexplicable instances of lights and electronics turning on and off, crying shadows in his closet, and some kind of dark hole in his bathroom that lead to strange places. It sounded crazy, Eileen had thought… but something in her nightmare somehow validated that—she just couldn't quite remember what, though.

_If I knocked, would you still be trapped in that room? Are you even trapped? Are you even in there?_

At that point, she realized just how tense her nerves had become. She reached up to knock on the door, eyes locked on the metal numbers labeling the door. That number, '302' sent an uneasy chill to her core. Gathering her courage and sucking in a breath of cold and almost stale air, she brought her knuckles down on the surface.

A muffled, high-pitched squeal came from within. She felt as if her heart had jumped up and caught in her throat. What the hell was that—a dying bat or rodent?

"H-Henry?" Her mouth and throat felt dry, and her voice so quiet it was almost nonexistent.

She heard what sounded like feet shuffling behind the door. Eileen waited for a moment, her body tense and her breath held. Her palms felt damp and her fingertips trembled. The hallway on either side of her was empty and dark. She took a tentative breath and moved toward the door once again.

Closer now, she rose up onto her toes to glance into the peep hole. Everything was a dark blur—of course, she knew she wouldn't be able to see anything from that end, but she had hoped to at least make out a moving silhouette. She only leaned against the door lightly before it swung open.

With a startled cry, Eileen stumbled to her knees inside of the apartment. As if the air had not been thick enough in the hallway, it was now enough to be crushed under. The apartment had the faint scent of cigarettes masking something rotten. Eileen pulled herself to her feet and took a nervous step inside, ready to apologize profusely if Henry came out into the living room wondering what in God's name flung through the front door. After all, it had hit the wall with a slam hard enough to be heard in the bedrooms.

The blinds were sealed, blocking all but a few rays of light that weeded through. Deeper into the apartment, she found that the ceiling fan had taken a violent crash atop a square coffee table. There were wax puddles and half-melted candles placed everywhere in strange places… atop a recliner, next to a wall with a large crack in it…

Eileen brought a hand slowly to her mouth in horror. She had seen it all before.

An apartment full of burnt out candles…

_Oh God… it wasn't a dream, was it?_

Eileen shifted about nervously, eyes still on the wreckage before her, "H-Henry?"

All around her, the apartment was growing colder by the minute.

Eileen knew there was evil in that place, and debated taking off out of the apartment as fast as her legs could take her, or investigating further for any trace of her neighbor. Her dream had to have either been some kind of sign or, more frightening yet, a reality. She was not about to leave Henry alone… where the hell could he be? Where was the last place she saw him in her dream? In some twisted nightmare rendition of the apartment complex they both lived in?

When she heard a crackling and popping noise coming from the hallway behind her, the fear of what she may see froze her solid. She couldn't bring herself to turn around and see one of those… _demons_ from her nightmare. Floating corpses with pale, blotchy skin, reeking of decay which Henry referred to as ghosts were still fresh in her mind. Their limbs didn't move and their heads hung limp. Dull gray eyes stretched wide and full of terror, as if the moment of death had been locked on their face forever.

Every moment a demon floated near her it was accompanied by some kind of low hum from somewhere in the depths of her mind. She was losing it. The fear was becoming too much. She knew something was behind her, watching her, waiting for her to circle around and become its next victim.

Eileen gathered her courage and turned.

She could see the dark blue rug curling at the edges,rotting away from the outside. The walls were lighting up with vein-like cracks and the paint was contorting upward and drifting up in large pieces into the air, where they burnt away into black ashes. Stepping out of the hallway was _that man_.

She screamed in terror at the sight of the killer with dirty blonde hair and a long blue raincoat. In one hand, stained with dirt and blood was a handgun, and in the other was an axe. His lips were twisted into a faint smile as he looked down at her. Eileen stumbled backward when her foot caught on the fallen ceiling fan.

She knew very well who he was—the killer from her nightmare called Walter Sullivan.

He raised the rusted axe in his hand and Eileen knew she was going to die. With a frantic scream, she scrambled for cover. Just as she turned away, she saw the face of a gray demon with peeling flesh behind her. It hung upside down with a long body that disappeared beneath the waist into the crackling ceiling. Its jaws unhinged like a hungry snake, revealing long sharp teeth connected by threads of black saliva. The demon shifted its weight back fast to swing at Eileen with open jaws.

Eileen could barely muster another terrified scream, merely whimpering between her tears as the creature suddenly exploded into a bloody spray. As she squeezed her eyes shut and ducked down, she realized that the now-bellowing creature was writhing in agony with an axe buried deep in its inhuman mouth.

_Oh, disgusting…_

She turned away as Walter put one heel on the creature's shoulder to pull the axe from its shattered bone and cartilage. Eileen wasted no time crawling past the killer's legs and ran straight for the door.

From the corner of her eye she saw the killer turn around with fresh blood running down his jacket. He shifted his grip on the axe, and began to walk quickly after her. Eileen pulled herself to her feet and ran for the third floor hallway. To her horror, the corruption of the room was _following_her. More withering walls were decaying to reveal an out of place skeleton of grated metal behind. Eileen raced passed her own apartment and to the stairwell.

_Oh God, no… not here too!_

She reached the stairwell only to find it rotting fast into the one she had seen in her nightmare. The walls were worn away and the floors were covered in a something like a thin layer of sanguine flesh. She was determined to make it to the entrance in the first floor lobby below and escape before it rotted away too. Cracks were forming a great web along the walls, make their way toward the base of the apartment complex. The real world was becoming the killer's world.

In that world, she knew would be locked in, and swallowed up by the spreading evil with everything else. This time wouldn't have Henry to protect her from the demons and the killer.

Eileen dashed down the flights of stairs faster that she should have. She caught herself on the railing as she slipped on the slippery skin growing over each inch of the floor. Her stomach sank when the railing began to wobble. It shattered like old wood beneath her, splintering down to two floors below to the lobby floor. Eileen had just barely leapt back quick enough to avoid falling with it.

"Miss Galvin, I've been waiting for you." The killer's voice had an unsettling gentleness.

Eileen glanced up to see him coming quickly down the stairs behind her. Without hesitation, she was back on her feet and running down the stairs.

_Yes, almost there… almost free…!_

By the second floor she had passed the spreading flesh and wires. But there was still a growingweb of cracks just feet above the exit, traveling down the walls and devouring everything in its path.

As Eileen neared the door, she heard the man behind her pick up his pace.. She could almost feel him behind her as she leapt off of the stairs onto the slippery lobby floor. With one last cry she raced for the doors, pushed them open. She felt his fingertips along her back and dove into an unexpected sea of thick, white fog beyond the doors.

_I'm free. I made it… oh God, I made it._

Silence interrupted only by the sound of her sneakers hitting the concrete below and her terrified breaths as she ran deeper into the mist. She looked back over her shoulder, unable to see more than four feet behind her before the fog erased the world from existence. Eileen Galvin ran for her very life into the chokingly thick fog, blinded by the morning light.

When she realized that the only footsteps she heard were her own, she slowed down. Her lungs ached for air and she was nauseatingly exhausted. She wiped a mix of blood and sweat from her forehead as she looked back and listened for the sound of his footsteps. He must have given up, if he had even followed her out of that apartment he haunted.

Tired, she dropped to her knees for rest.

Something was wrong. Eileen looked around, seeing only fog around her. The street went on forever all around her, like a plateau of concrete. There were no buildings. There were no street signs, even. Just an ocean of cold, white fog.

"Please God, let me wake up, let me wake up, let me wake up… Save me, please, anyone, anything… save me… God, help me…" Her voice was barely a dry whisper.

Eileen's chest rose and fell as she squeezed her eyes shut, praying to wake up from the nightmare once more. But no matter what words she spoke or what God she prayed to, she only opened her eyes to see the pure white fog that swallowed her.


	2. 02

**2.**

A concrete sidewalk seemed to go on forever. Cracked and worn with age, it was unnerving, yet better than any flesh-covered path from hell. To her right was a great wall of masonry she had never before seen in Ashfield. But there was something about it… Eileen felt that she had seen somewhere before. Not from a dream, but from somewhere else—

_Where else could I have seen it?_

She had walked beside this wall before at one time. Eileen even knew when to expect certain crests built into the stone. Not far ahead of her was a pole crowned with a weathered bus stop sign.

It was damn familiar, but the bus stop had no accompanying map to tell her where she was. It could not possibly be Ashfield.

She strained to see through the fog. The cold was enough to reveal the steam of each breath beyond her lips. There were no cars around, no one driving by and no one walking on the sidewalk or even across the street. It was a foggy ghost town.

Occasionally Eileen would look back over her shoulder to make sure she was safely alone. For once the solace was a welcome thing. There was very little else that went through her mind other than survival. She knew now that the nightmare had been very real. She and Henry traversed a world born of a demonic ritual performed by a serial killer who had been dead for ten years. His ghost remained in the places he was bound to by horrifying memories.

A dark steel plate caught her eye, embedded deep into the brick wall. Eileen suddenly knew where she was, in a stomach-sinking confirmation that she was somewhere far from Ashfield.

St. Jennifer Memorial Park

_How could I be here? …St. Jennifer Park is in Silent Hill… but after last night, how the hell am I even questioning this anymore?_

One of the places she and Henry fought their way through in the nightmare had been the Toluca Woods on the outskirts of Silent Hill. Physical spaces made no sense in that madman's world, and she knew that she had escaped the frying pan only to find herself locked in a much greater freezer.

Silent Hill had to be over sixty miles away from Ashfield. There was no way she could have stepped out of her apartment building in Ashfield, wandered for an hour, and wound up in a park she remembered vividly from her childhood in the little resort town.

The fog was beginning to lighten up as she approached the ornate iron gates of St. Jennifer Memorial Park. Behind her, the street simply faded away into a white wall of mist. Ahead, she could make out a playground a small number of yards away. Everything further disappeared into that white abyss. Eileen took that moment to try and form some kind of plan.

She was not safe. That was a fact.

It had been years since she lived with her mother at the old residential district in the lower south end of Silent Hill. She knew that the park was about an hour's walk from her childhood home. There was nothing of interest in that part of town; only just a series of old houses and suburbs. But if she cut across the park, providing she was on… Memorial St, yes, she recognized it clearly now, then she could make her way to South Neely St. on the other side. There was a small guns and ammunition store there. If the town was truly abandoned and she was alone with that killer and any monstrous legions, she would have to fight for her life.

That was her destination then—to find a gun, and then to find help… but where…?

Eileen was already walking along the winding pathways decorating the park. All around was short and up kept grass and the occasional naked tree with barren branches. Despite her growing fatigue, Eileen kept her eyes open and scouted for any sign of movement. Hearing a faint squeal of metal—swings, she knew there had to be someone around. The loneliness was damn near painful for her at that point, although she would rather have felt that than the terror that came with a madman carrying an axe and a handgun. Loneliness was far better than that maniac chasing after her, trying to kill her or sacrifice her in some cult ritual.

Following the screech of an old swing set, the path began to curve down the slope of a small hill. Around the bend, the cobblestone trail crossed an empty playground. Eileen slowed to a halt as she took in the rhythmic cries of aged metal. There was no breeze to push the swing, but still it had a slow rhythm. She looked up to examine the surrounding area for any children who had just gotten up and walked off… but all around her were only the distant shadows of trees, benches, and more white walls of fog.

Eileen stepped into the sandbox and grabbed the thick chain of the swing. It fell still and the echoing wails of old chains on a metal bar were silenced.

For a moment, she could remember the feel of those dirty old chains in her palms as a small girl. Back then, the skies were always blue with scattered gray and white clouds. Her mother would sit on the bench adjacent to the sandbox, reading some worn, paperback novel and occasionally look up with a warm smile.

_The swings seemed so much bigger back then._

Those were the weekends of a much happier time and a much happier child.

Again, her mind fell back to that little boy—there had been a ritual that the boy was a part of. A ritual that she learned was very real; the 21 Sacraments. Walter Sullivan's twenty-one victims, each sacrificed brutally, and she had been lucky number twenty who barely made it out with her life. Henry had been marked as the final victim, twenty-one. That was why the man dragged her into his world. It was to kill her in that ritual… for that little boy she sought to protect.

That little boy was _him_—Walter Sullivan. That little boy was the last bit of innocence in the heart of a madman. Within that boy there was less desire to complete a ritual intended to resurrect some cult god and more of a desire to find his _mommy_, whom he believed to be trapped within Room #302.

If only she could have found the child Walter… he was nothing like the adult. God knows what the adult Walter could do to that poor boy…

A high-pitched giggle startled Eileen and she stumbled forward away from the swing. She looked back with wide eyes on the tall, tunnel slide. Was that him? It had to be him, the child Walter, hiding somewhere in the slide, probably trying to scare her.

"Walter? Kid, are you there?" Eileen called, taking slow steps near the slide.

She heard another high pitched laugh and smiled, "Come on, kid, it's me."

She could hear him crawling inside of the tunnel slide, and could see the shadowed silhouette of a small figure nearing toward the end.

Then the figure stopped.

"…Walter?"

Suddenly the child paused and began to kick at the walls of the tunnel as if in the throes of a seizure. The laughter lowered to an inhuman octave, as the child kicked and began to scream. The sound was like two voices coming from one mouth, a low, tantrum-like cry and a mocking laugh crying out in duet. Eileen backed away from the slide and ran.

She tripped over a knee-high decorative turtle sculpture, and crashed to her hands and knees on the sand. When she looked back over her shoulder and saw the childlike creature crawling out of the slide on its belly. As it slithered out, it revealed a disgusting form. It had a body covered in withering gray flesh, dripping with some thick liquid as black as oil. With long arms twice the length of its torso, and scrawny legs, the creature rose up and turned to her.

She let out a terrified scream when she saw the creature's chuckling face, reminiscent of a smiling porcelain doll. It had a frozen, painted face in the shape of a toothy grin and eyes shut with joy. As it curled forward, she saw that the opposite side of its head held another much more monstrous, almost pig-like face.

Without a second thought, Eileen rose to her feet and ran. Before the laughter could get too far behind her, she saw more of the small and slender figures slipping out from beneath picnic benches and from the shadows behind the playground apparatuses. She rushed down the cobblestone pathway in effort to escape the pack of gigglers behind her, all moving after her like some band of hungry predators. Not far ahead, she spotted a thick branch on the ground. That would be her weapon.

A giggler's fingertips tickled the flesh of her calf, causing Eileen to scream and swing the branch around with every ounce of strength in her body. The branch was heavy and moved fast. It crashed into the creature hard enough to knock it to the ground. She continued running as the demons moved in on her, crawling out of the woodwork at every turn.

To her relief, not far ahead she saw the familiar gates of the Munson St. Zoo at the far north end of the park. The multi-pitched laughter of the gigglers behind her seemed to fall quiet in the distance.

Eileen could hear a low, grating noise in her ears that made her head throb. As if suffering a massive head rush, she wobbled and caught herself just short of collapsing to her knees. The world around her began to blur and her balance became difficult to sustain, but she kept running.

Nothing could make her stop running, even the blinding darkness that was painting spots over her eyes. She slowed to take in precious air, soothing the pain within her lungs. Finally, she let her sore legs rest and the light-headedness clear. It was then that she noticed the change in the sky.

_What the hell…?_

Beyond the thick atmosphere of fog, the color of the sky was changing. It fell to orange, then dark red, settling in an ominous black with traces of crimson lights in the distance. It had been like watch a sunset recorded on a video, then fast-forwarding through the entire thing. She half-expected to see the world begin to rot away around her once more. She clutched the stick hard enough to make her knuckles go pale as her breaths hitched up a notch in anxious fear.

Before, the air had been cold and dry… but with the shifting of worlds came a change of air. Her skin was met with a sudden wave of damp heat. Beads of sweat would soon form over her bloodstained brow. Then the humidity hit her exhausted body like some vengeful force. The world had transformed from a frosty morning to a sweltering, pitch-black night.

In the distance, she could hear the squeals and cries of animals. Giggling echoed once again in the darkness behind her.

Ahead, there were tall lamps inside the zoo grounds, giving off a bold, orange light to illuminate the area. Even over the great brick wall that bordered the zoo, Eileen's path was clear.

She followed the cobblestone, crossing a few feet of concrete stairs. Rounding a corner to the end of her path, she made it to the zoo's gated entrance. The tall gates would be easy enough to lock behind her; the padlock and chain were strewn on the floor in fine condition. She did not waste a second in locking the gate, even with trembling hands.

Eileen stepped back with her eyes still on the gate. Just outside she could hear the echo of the gigglers and their taunting cries. When she heard a small group of them scream in sudden unison, followed by some other creature's death cry, she knew with certainty that they had found a new prey.

She felt wood on her fingertips, and to her relief, she turned to find an old bench. A moment to sit and rest was like some merciful god's blessing in her tired mind.

_I haven't been here in ages either… Never did like this little zoo. I felt bad for the animals, forced to live their lives in cages to be stared at. _

_Let me think… This was the north end of the park. Actually, if I cut across from this entrance to the one right on the other side, I'll come out just across the street from that gun store. What was it called…? My dad used to love going there and talking about hunting with the store owner… Gregson's Ammunition, was that it?_

Eileen leaned back and sighed, running her hand through tousled hair. A tree branch wasn't going to get her far if this hell was anything like the one from that nightmare. She just needed to stay alive. Find Henry… they had both been in it together, she knew, and she prayed that he escaped the nightmare world somehow. But if he _was_ there with her somewhere, she absolutely had to find him.

_Tap, tap, tap_

Eileen clutched the branch when she looked back at the gate.

Walter let the barrel of his gun drag across the iron bars and eyed in at her the way a hungry predator eyes a wounded prey. Eileen was still, waiting for his next move yet caught in a spiral of fear. Finally, Walter's lips curled in a smile,

"Let me in, Miss Galvin."

"Stay the hell away from me!" Eileen backed away.

"I just thought I would ask." Walter extended a hand through the bars, reaching down and taking the chain in one hand.

The heavy black bars of iron began to groan and decay. They changed color around his touch and began to corrode. Eileen ran when she saw the metal chain start to crumble like rusty snowflakes beneath his fingertips.

Eileen heard him pushing the gates open as they withered. With the padlock clanking on the concrete, she heard him pushing the heavy gates open. She covered her head in a panic, hearing the click of his gun not far away. As she lowered her head, she glanced to the side and saw an empty animal cage. The floor was covered in a slimy layer of black blood, and a putrid, almost metallic scent permeated the air. To add to her panic, the cage on the other side bore a stretched fleshy hide where the entrance should have been. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to smell the sickening odor on the humid air.

_Where are all the animals?_

Suddenly, the ground was gone from beneath her feet. Eileen caught herself on her forearms after tripping down a few small stairs. She looked back over her shoulder to see Walter walking after her calmly and quickly, raising his gun.

Eileen reached for the railing beside her only to be met with warm grime. She pulled herself to her feet just in time to hear a gunshot that echoed on closed walls of the zoo. Eileen screamed and pulled away, covering her head again as she heard gurgling beside her. A giggler fell in a heap of broken bone and flesh beside her. Fragments of tissue and blood now decorated her denim pants. Eileen felt her stomach churn at the pained bubbling noise it made as it tried to move again, even after a near point-blank shot to the head. Two more gunshots finished it off, and Eileen took the moment to run.

"Please do not run from me anymore, Miss Galvin."

There were only two directions, _at_ the killer or _away_.

Walter looked past Eileen and a strange paleness washed over him, as though he had become petrified. When she turned to see what he was looking at, she realized that corpse-like canine demons were coming for them. She was trapped between a pack of six feral creatures and a petrified killer with a loaded gun.

Eileen took the distracted look in his eye as the moment to move.

He glanced over at her, caught off-guard, "Eileen!"

In that moment his face was met a primal cry and a heavy wood branch swung hard enough for it to crack against his face. Eileen dropped the broken tree branch and disappeared around a corner, leaving Walter dazed and bloody.

Eileen was unsure how far she had run into the labyrinth of cages. All she knew was that he was down and being attacked by those demons. She heard the gigglers screaming and hissing in rage and terror. Even from afar, the echoed gunshots made her head split with dull pain.

Up ahead she saw an abandoned gift shop with boarded up windows. She nearly collided with the door, frantically turning the knob and pushing her way in. She frantically shut the door behind her, locking it. With shaking hands, she felt around the walls for a light switch. Her fingers traced over one for a second, then quickly flicked it on. The lights hanging overhead gave a low crackle of electricity, lighting up the sales floor for a few seconds before shorting out.

Eileen sighed irritably, "Shit. Of course the lights wouldn't work."

A gunshot sounded just yards away from the door, making Eileen jump. She slammed her hand over her mouth to stifle a startled cry. All over her body began to shake again and her stomach quivered. She could hear the sound of his footsteps getting closer and closer to the door she hid behind. The jingle of metal bullets could be heard as he reloaded his gun clip. Eileen squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry.

Holding her breath, she looked up at the window nearby. It was boarded up from the inside with wood that gave off a moldy odor. Between small gaps in the boards, the orange glow from the streetlamps outside poured in. She sucked in her breath tensely when he crossed, blocking out the only source of light in the room. He stopped for a moment, and Eileen prayed that he would keep going. Wide-eyed and frantic, she looked up at the doorknob to remind herself that she had locked it behind her. She saw it begin to turn. Then it stopped—locked.

He released the doorknob and slowly began to walk away. Rubbery soles on a gravelly path could be heard for a few moments becoming softer after he left. Only when Eileen was certain that she was safe did she allow herself to breathe and think.

She had to find some kind of light. There had to be another exit somewhere in that store. Eileen crawled carefully toward the front sales desk and reached around for the novelty lighters that she had gotten a glimpse of moments ago. Her hands trailing over the dusty surface caused her nose to itch and left her with the screaming desire to sneeze.

She rubbed her nose, suppressing the urge and huddled back down with her newfound lighter in hand. The cheap plastic tool was stubborn to gift her with precious light at first, but when it lit up the tiger-patterned lighter illuminated much of the cramped store. Shelves full of dirty stuffed animals, trinkets, and children's jewelry were packed into the small sales floor like tuna in a can. Narrow aisles led to a back wall covered with animal posters and printed photos of the nearby Toluca Lake.

However, there was also much she could have done without to see. Other than fleshy, slick walls, Eileen recoiled nauseously when she saw that the floor just a few feet away was covered in another layer of stretched skin. It was worn thin and almost moving with a kind of moist, bloody pulse. Before she could discern whether maggots and other scavenging insects feasted on the "floor", she turned away. Her eyes watered and she forced down the bile that had risen.

Eileen looked to the far back side of the store and saw a door.

Maybe it would lead into to a back room with the employee and manager's office, and hopefully an emergency exit? She began moving slowly toward it, lighting her way with the plastic lighter. The growing flame was starting to burn the tip of her thumb but she could have cared less, winding between the narrow aisles. She found herself nearly at her destination when a large gap in the floor blocked her way.

Where the unpleasant flesh carpet ended, the floor opened up like the mouth of some endless pit. Eileen held the lighter down to see just how deep the hole was. No bottom in sight and using her toe to shove a small plastic lunchbox into the hole returned her with a silent, delayed echo. The distance was just a few feet too far to try and leap, and the floor on the other side gave the impression of weakness she couldn't trust.

"_That's alright I'll just walk around it. No big deal."_

She turned back and entered the aisle closest to the wall leading up to the back room. Another souvenir that had fallen from the shelf caught her eye. Eileen kneeled down as fond warmth began to rise within her. It was out of place, and unlikely to have been a part of the store's inventory—a large old walkman radio. Her lips curled into a smile as she examined it.

"_Straight out of the eighties… I had one a little like this when I was a kid."_

The small, stylistic cleft in the plastic beside the volume wheel must have been the speaker. Eileen switched the radio on out of curiosity. If the thing had working batteries, she knew they may come in handy when she came across a flashlight.

Eileen nearly dropped it as a horrifying sound burst out of the speaker. Garbled static and the sound of a screaming, crying child shattered the silence in the most horrifying way. She fumbled over the radio quickly muttering repeatedly, "Shit, shit, shit!" Praying that no one had heard the loud radio, she flicked the switch off and pushed it away. Eileen looked back at the windows, praying that the orange light would go unbroken.

Another wave of dizziness hit and her vision began to blur. Eileen cursed under her breath as she reached out to steady herself against a shelf. Beneath her fingertips she felt warm moisture, too disgusting for her to bother looking over at. A deep noise from afar was approaching. It was something like the low bellow of a storm or the sound of quivering stone in an earthquake. It started off far and was coming closer. In her stupor, she dropped the lighter and everything went black except for the orange light that was pouring in.

"Oh God… what the…" Eileen breathed, choking on hot and putrid air. Something was coming closer, and she began to shuffle weakly back to the door behind her as if she could find salvation on the other side.

It was coming faster. She knew she couldn't escape it.

The hazy vertigo overtook her and the sound now rolled over her completely. Just as she fell to her knees, unable able to stand straight, she heard the windows shatter behind her, and the old wood boards being flung from the walls. The shelves shook and the floor shifted beneath her. At that point, Eileen was gone.

She fell forward onto the cold, filthy tile and drifted into a deep sleep with only the hellish sound of some furious world to comfort her.


	3. 03

**3.**

The noise was like low, metallic wailing, like some old machine being forced to grind while its sheer age and collected rust and dirt protested. Her ears ached at the sound, and all she could see around her was darkness. Her limbs felt heavy… so heavy… she tried to shift her right arm, but it felt like it was bound to the warm, wet floor by iron weights. When she opened her eyes she could not see a place she recognized, she couldn't even see her own body beneath her. It was if she were looking into a peephole and seeing something fuzzy on the other side.

Her vision became clearer as she saw a tall man standing in front of a brick wall. One of the walls bordering the zoo, she knew. One hand was raised, soaked in rich red liquid, tracing some intricate design within a circle on the stone. As her mind's eye became sharper she realized that the man was Walter. His mouth formed words she could not hear or recognize.

The metallic wailing had become a rhythmic lullaby to Eileen. When it suddenly became like nails on chalkboard, she felt herself snapping back into reality for a split second. The image of the dark, orange tinted world and the grimy stone wall disappeared, leaving her surrounded by tall shelves. They weren't the same ones from before, however.

She was then viewing that dark world again, this time more vivid than before. Where Walter once stood was that little boy. He was completing the circle in red chalk, standing up on a park bench to reach. Sobbing quietly she heard him crying for his mother, "Mommy… Mommy, I woke you up, but you went away again…"

Eileen bolted up for a moment, coughing up foul-tasting murky water. Her split second of reality was again torn away as she saw the boy finishing up the red circle on the wall and step down from the bench.

Wiping the tears away the little boy whimpered, "Please find this mommy, I made it for you."

When Eileen awoke, her back side was soaked with the lukewarm water that trickled down a nearby wall. The irritating sound of a garbled radio signal was coming from somewhere near. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that the ceiling had been replaced by grated steel that looked like it was on the receiving end of an unpleasant meat grinder spray. She swallowed hard and willed herself to sit up quickly. Eileen rose to her feet on wobbly legs, still dizzy and aching from the restless sleep.

The shelves startled her. They were rusted over and the toys and trinkets had been buried under more fleshy coating, complete with slithering pests she winced and curled away from. The floor was flooded with about two inches of water pouring in from a crack in the ceiling. She heard rain pattering on the roof outside. Down by her feet was that small walkman, emitting a much gentler, but equally discomforting myriad of static. She picked it up and lowered the volume, only to find that the volume wheel did nothing.

_Shit… I should just leave it._

A phlegm-ridden cough from nearby caught her attention. A figure moved among the aisles, casting its shadow through the shelves. Something tall and dark, with a shape unlike a human and… _hovering_ slowly. Eileen wasn't about to figure out what it was. She quickly disappeared through the door and into the next room. Upon closing the door the radio ceased its garbled hum.

She was met with a well lit room from a buzzing, ancient-looking light bulb. The walls were no longer covered in the usual layer of plaster. Metal bars and beams rested where wood and drywall should have been. This place reminded her of a concrete and rusted iron jungle of buildings she and Henry had traveled together in the nightmare world.

_That's right… I remember a building world where we saw huge ape-like creatures. They gave chase… Walter was there, stalking us, waiting to catch us and kill us… __We just barely made it out alive. It was so cold, and the buildings looked like they went up forever into the pitch-black sky._

To her left was an emergency exit, but before she rushed for it, she glanced over at the small office area to her right. Eileen was immensely grateful for doing so when she saw an aluminum baseball bat lying beneath the workbench covered in water-damaged papers. She raced to it, grasping the sturdy and lightweight bat tightly. It would be a perfect weapon until she got her hands on a gun. If Walter came near her, she wouldn't hesitate to smash him in the head… and that was merciful compared to what she could do to one of those fleshy demons.

Stepping through the emergency exit, Eileen was hit with another familiar wave of feverish humidity and warm rain that made her feel more stifled than freed. She wondered if this was what a rainy night in the tropics was like. But the world she knew as gone. It was as if that wave of deep noise, that growl of some angered god had wiped away everything and replaced it with ruins.

The animal cages that had been empty before now showcased hanging bodies she drew her eyes away from quickly. The ground that had once been covered with concrete and lined with flowerbeds was replaced by a floor of slime-coated, grated steel fence. Through each square she could see through was another endless dark drop with a faint small fiery glow in the depths. With a sinking feeling she felt as if she were inside of hell, looking down at the distant core of a fiery nightmare.

She ignored the sick squishing and moist splashes of God-knows-what beneath her shoes as she walked out onto the sturdy metal. In the far reaches of the zoo she thought she could hear animals… but judging by the other beings she had come across, she was unsure if 'animal' was the right word.

_I can hear animals screaming out there… I hate hearing animals in pain. It's just like that building world Henry and I had been in._

Passing an open cage with a rotting carcass suspended in a web of barbed wire, Eileen cringed.

_Wonder what kind of animals would live in hell's zoo?_

Her route led around a corner and began to slope down like a ramp over some stairs and earth beneath. Further ahead was a large, out of place giant cage, the size of a two-story house. Its great door had fallen, and Eileen hopped over the iron bars as she approached the cage. Her walkman began to sound off with garbled static, which Eileen quickly reached for to turn off, "Damn it!"

She couldn't afford to be found by Walter or any other creature, even with a newfound baseball bat. Avoiding conflict was the surest way to survive.

As the static became louder, Eileen frantically switched the walkman off. Before she could sigh and relax in the silence she looked up at the great cage to see an oily dark figure with six slender legs. Each seemed to be covered in glimmering moisture, working around a thick silky thread which the creature lowered itself on. Eileen was already stepping back as the creature turned its head to her, revealing a grinning porcelain-like face. It was a taller, more curved and slender version of the gigglers from before, only with six spidery legs and three fleshy horns protruding from its skull like some kind of crown.

Eileen didn't even cry out in the terror she felt as she turned and ran. It leapt down from its place and landed just feet behind her. She felt the grated metal beneath her heels shudder under the creature's weight. Gathering all her strength, she gripped the baseball bat tight and swung it around with her full body weight. Nailing the creature in the side of the face, she heard a disgusting crunch of bone and flesh under the monster's piercing wail. It sounded like a woman screaming in agony.

As it stumbled on to its side, Eileen continued running. She heard the queen-like giggler wailing and sobbing behind her, stirring the laughter of her subordinates. All around her, crawling out of cages and the shadows cast by empty structures, she saw the gigglers gathering around her like hyenas. Straight ahead was a short stone wall that she was ready to jump.

She pulled herself up the wall just in time to feel one of the demons drag a bony hand down her back and pull at her shirt. Eileen slipped free of its grip and disappeared over the edge into a narrow passage below. With an upward glance, she was happy to find that the creatures were unwilling to crawl over and continue chase. But she wasn't about to rest yet. Ahead was some kind of narrow, cobblestone path between two unusually placed brick walls. To her right, a long dark corridor and a subsequent left turn lay before her. To her left was a similar tunnel only with cage-like fencing over the top, high above her. She opted for that route and continued running.

Down the corridor she came across a door—but turning the knob only revealed it was either locked or broken. Eileen cursed and continued running, glancing up to see some calm and expressionless gigglers sitting above her cage and looking down at her. Unnerved, she continued running. Another door down the corridor was locked. Eileen became desperate, wondering if she had ran a long way down the wrong path.

When she turned another corner, the tight, claustrophobia-inducing walls were beginning to part for a wider path. Further up, one wall even ended and lead off into an empty abyss she was not interested in exploring. Rounding one last bend, she came to a familiar bench beside a wall. Everything was lit with the familiar orange tone by a nearby lamppost.

A large red crest was painted on the wall. One ring on the outside done in what looked like blood, and red chalk glyphs resembling runes lined the inside. A second inner ring bordered a triangle with another curvy, winding design drawn in the center. As Eileen approached the crest painted on the wall, she heard low humming emanating from… she couldn't pinpoint it. Was that symbol on the wall _humming_? Eileen felt like a migraine headache was welling within her skull as she examined it.

_This thing makes my head feel awful… it probably doesn't help that I saw him drawing it with bloody hands. Psycho… I hope he's gone._

Just as Eileen began to step away, the symbol on the wall began to fade away. One ring at a time, as if each line were disappearing in the order it was drawn. The humming silenced and the crawling pain within her head ceased.

Nearby, blood pooled on the ground, framing the lifeless body of a canine demon. Its limbs twitched for a second before its body was pierced with two more bullets. The puddle, rippling under the rain, spread slowly past the man who stood over the fallen creature. The fallen beast now stained a once perfectly drawn circle, decorated with the innate markings he had left on a nearby wall. Despite the thick red liquid coming from the creature's wounds, the sacred symbol went unscathed. With the completion of the holy seal, he knew the previous mark would fade away. However, he knew Eileen would still be drawn to the area by the will of the one who created it.

Walter looked up ahead, seeing her just as expected. She was nearly obscured by distant cages, warped out of shape and clustered together like strewn toys.

"What the hell is this…?" Eileen whispered aloud as she saw more carcasses strung up with barbed wire. Each body held a distinct human shape, but they were wrapped up in canvas-like sacks that resembled body bags. She shook her head and focused on the path ahead. The west entrance to the zoo had to be close, and the gun store would be just across the street. If it even existed anymore, in the twisted version of the world she once knew. A distant muffled moan from the park only reminded her how desperately she needed to escape.

The path crossed through a large animal's cage, almost like some kind of gazebo. In the center of the cage was a small garden table, decorated at the edges with an ornate pattern. The cleanliness of the milky white table and its accompanying chairs was startlingly out of place, surrounded by all the decay and rust. To top it off, a little china tea set lay out on the table. Four floral tea cups and a pitcher lay on the center of the table over a dull white tray.

_What a great place for a tea party._

When she looked up, she cringed at the sight of four hanging bodies, dirtied with the same grime that coated the place as well as dried, black blood.

_But of course… I thought it was too peaceful here. _Eileen thought in disgust. For a moment, her inner clean freak was met with a breather, only to be met with the same rotting decay from before.

The fact that the bodies were unlike the others disturbed her. They were not wrapped in the heavy-looking body bags, but instead looked like normal young women wearing skirts and shirts she might have thought were fashionable at one point. Eileen covered her mouth, coughing nauseously as she backed away to the edge of the cage. Each of the four faces was covered with a mask resembling dolls, similar to the gigglers.

One of the masks, wrapped on a head with long, messy hair was broken at the mouth. In the place of smiling, painted-on lips, the hard material of the mask was cracked. A thin chain protruded from the hole, snaking down around the slender neck and disappearing beneath the confines of a low-cut shirt. Hanging just below the collarbone was another item, so clean it was out of place; a small gray key.

Before, in the nightmarish world she had traveled with Henry, he would find keys and unusual objects in the strangest places. One of the things he mentioned to her was if something looks too clean and out of place to belong, take it. Unfortunately, the key rested over darkened, withered flesh that made Eileen sick to see and _smell_.

With a deep, motivational breath, she climbed up onto the slender, wobbly table. As much as she winced to feel the cold, damp material and flesh beneath her fingertips, she held onto the hanging body's waist for balance. A threatening wobble almost toppled her, and she parted her feet shoulder-width to steady herself. Then she looked up at the key, placed between two nearly exposed mounds of flesh. At one time, the young woman must have been quite beautiful and shapely to behold, and definitely dressed to flaunt it. But what remained of her was enough to make anyone recoil in disgust.

_That SMELL!_

Eileen reached out quickly for the key, shuddering at the feel of cold flesh beneath it. The key was attached to the wiry chain with a small metal key ring. Those things had always been a pain in the ass for Eileen's clumsy fingers. She pulled the end of the key ring open and began to slide the key out. Her actions shifted the table uncomfortably beneath her and Eileen froze in effort to remain standing.

Just as Eileen tore the key from its place, she was startled by a voice behind her. Her body tumbled forward and the table tipped over. Eileen crashed down onto one of the chairs, and the rough ground left her elbows bleeding lightly. She looked up with wide eyes at the source of the voice—the body adjacent to the one that held the key key hung limp, but a girl's voice rung out from beneath the mask.

"What's their problem? Why won't they just leave me alone? I hate them, I never did anything to them!"

Eileen shifted to her feet slowly, keeping a careful eye on the speaking body.

"I didn't do anything… but they still follow me and they beat me up. There's more of them than me, and they knock me down and kick me and laugh at me!" The voice sobbed, "I hate living here. Why won't they just ignore me like everyone else?"

The hanging body beside the speaking one chimed in with a high-pitched nasally voice, "I think they're jealous of you."

"Why would they be jealous of you? They're beautiful and have everything. You have nothing they would want. Maybe they laugh at you because you're simply ugly." The third body joined in with a bitter tone, "The concept shouldn't be that hard, really. You're rather disgusting and weak."

The other two began to whisper words so fast Eileen couldn't understand. The third corpse with the sour voice began to swing back and forth, singing, "_Ugly little bitch, that's what you are. Ugly little bitch, get hit by a car."_

Each word and every syllable sent chills down Eileen's spine. As if the hanging corpses weren't freaky enough, they had to go and start singing and bickering like teenage girls. It didn't take long for her to dash out of the 'tea party cage' and leave the taunting behind.

As she ran, some graffiti on an abandoned building caught her attention.

the field it will not end  
the field it goes on forever  
in trees beside the river bend  
you left me with a feather

**THE FIELD IT WILL NOT END  
THE FIELD IT GOES ON FOREVER  
IN TREES BESIDE THE RIVER BEND  
YOU LEFT ME WITH A FEATHER**

Nonsense, she figured, moving on. Henry would have been able to piece it together. He was good at riddles and finding little clues in strewn about articles and papers. It had to be the natural journalist in him.

_Henry… where are you when I need you?_

Exploring further only lead her to dead-ended cage barricades. Eileen had no choice but to backtrack through the 'gazebo' with the twisted tea party. On her second visit, however, the bodies were gone, and the fancy little table was now in pieces. Eileen made her way through the cage carefully, eyeing the surrounding area for any monstrous predator. Beyond was a fork in the road with only one path left unexplored.

Another small shop awaited her, with welcoming lights glowing inside. The sign over the door with a cartoony design looked worn and the store name was unreadable. A door painted as white as the building's walls awaited.

The door was locked.

"This better work…" Eileen sighed as she pulled the key from her pocket.

To her relief, the door slipped open. Although what lay before her was hardly as comforting.

_Wonderful. An upside-down store…_

Lights that should have been hanging on metal chains were standing straight up, as if Eileen were the one upside down. She stepped into the room, feet on the ceiling, feeling an uneasy sense of vertigo for moment. In the center of the room was a spinning ceiling fan. The blades were sharpened at the edges and smattered with bits of flesh and shimmering red pieces of meat. A disgustingly mangled canine demon lay in pieces beneath the fast-spinning blades.

Eileen passed the horrendous eyeful, opting to try the door across from her. She had to stand on her toes to reach the knob. It opened up into another upside down room, lined with tile walls and accompanied by a bathroom stall and sink to her right.

"Oh my God…" As Eileen stepped inside, her eyes were locked on the face-down body lying on the 'floor' with its body halfway out of the stall. It was soaked in blood and holding onto a book. Written on the stall door above the corpse, in sloppy handwriting was,

**AVELYN PASSER**  
THEY ALWAYS **SEE** YOU

Eileen swallowed hard and looked away. There seemed to be little else of interest in the room. A window nearby caught her attention and she glanced out into the world beyond. Black skies, more rusty cages, and warm rain still falling outside. But she saw the western entrance to the zoo on that side of the shop with gates wide open. Eileen's joy at finding a way out of the hellish park was enough to make her cheer quietly, "Yes, finally!"

A loud thud made her jump and turn quickly. The body that was lying on the 'floor' had fallen beside her and landed in a bone shattering position. Eileen turned away at the sight of a mutilated face, and screamed. Above, a creature with moist, rust-colored flesh was crawling out of the floor from a growing pool of maggot-ridden dark blood. Disgusted, Eileen began running for the door, and narrowly missed being swatted by the arm of the half-emerged hanging man. She clutched the rough grip tape of the baseball bat and dove into the main room, looking back just in time to see the hanging man disappear back into the tile.

Eileen's knuckles were ghostly white as she grasped the bat in her hands. Her eyes jumped from shadow to shadow in the sales floor room. As the silence went uninterrupted she eased up and headed past the spinning fan for the other door. She was so close to the western gate of the zoo.

She exited the room and was led down four stairs into a tight corridor, no more than three feet wide. The dirt floor crunched beneath her feet, and above she saw only darkness. Pulling out her lighter to brighten her path, she saw a grated metal fence overhead. Eileen followed the corridor, wrapping around the perimeter of the gift shop and was lead up into a closed metal gate. It opened into the back of another large cage with thick iron bars. The rain had finally ceased, and she could hear the ambient sound of water droplets splashing into scattered puddles.

From the ceiling, dog collars were hanging from thin strings. Out of curiosity, Eileen pulled one close and examined the attached tag. Again, that name appeared, "AVELYN PASSER" with what looked like an address below it almost entirely scratched out. She recognized the street name however; Sparrow Drive. It was one of the smaller, cute little roads in the residential area of town.

_Avelyn Passer again... must be pretty popular among the demons and monsters here._

"I don't like this place."

Her body shifted around quickly to find _him_ with his body leaning tiredly on the iron bars. Blood stained and soaked from the rain, Walter looked in at her calmly, eying her in complete silence. She knew that if she ran through a nearby cage exit, she ran the risk of being cornered… but he was still separated from her by tall iron bars. Then again, she remembered vividly what he could do to those bars if he so desired. Turning them to withered, discolored dust didn't seem to be a problem for him, she thought grudgingly.

"I hate animals... May we leave now?"

She decided to take her chances and disappeared through the freshly opened door. Walter sighed, watching her disappear around a corner and tightened his grip on the bars.

Eileen ran as fast as her legs could take her, seeing a dimly glowing aquarium ahead. Lights from within the aquarium had a dark red hue, and a nauseating, salty odor reached her nostrils. She coughed and covered her nose as she sprinted into the aquatic center. On either side of her were filthy fish tanks with foggy glass and slimy, myrtle-colored water. Dead fish floated atop the stagnant water, while other, more decayed bodies had already sunk beneath the grimy water's visibility.

_I'm going to be sick… this smells horrible…_

Slowing down to rest and catch her breath, Eileen bent over and fought back the urge to be sick. Steadying herself with a hand to one of the cold glass surfaces proved to be a grueling mistake. She pulled away in disgust as thick, translucent threads of slime stretched from the glass to her fingertips. Eileen wiped her hands on her pants and began to cough.

"…Mother… where are you?" Walter entered the aquarium calmly, eying the area for his prey. From the dull red lights behind each tank, he could see her shadow moving around a corner not far up ahead. He could hear her light footsteps stopping and the sound of broken glass crunching beneath shoes.

_Mother?_ Eileen thought in disgusted confusion.

She had come to a wall with an empty tank. The glass was shattered and the interior was dry, lined with sand at the bottom and decorated with tall rocks and withered ocean plants. As she took a hiding place behind some large, black boulders she realized that a faint, slow breathing could be heard from above. It was deep, as if something huge were sleeping above them.

_What the hell is that breathing sound?_

Then she heard him coming over, stepping over the glass and climbing up onto the sandy floor of the tank. Eileen held her breath and squeezed the baseball bat tightly, ready to swing when he came near. She looked over to watch his shadow growing smaller as he came closer. Her heart was pounding in her chest and a cold sweat chilled her body.

"Mother, where are you?"

She shrunk down beneath the boulders as he walked past her hiding place. Walter looked up and came to a stop.

"…huh…"

It was only then that she realized where that deep, slow breathing had been coming from.

Where one side of the tank had been shattered, allowing her to climb in and hide, the other wall was still intact. She thought at first that the thick glass magnified what was on the other side of the pristine wall. But she realized quickly that on the other side of the glass was a little girl's face looking in. Eileen looked on in shivering terror, wondering if this was what fish had to live with every moment. Seeing people's faces looking in, almost pressed up against the glass walls of their fish bowls.

The blurry face was huge, looking in through foggy glass. Just the lips were half the size of Eileen's body. It began to twist into a look of pain and tears started to roll down soft cheeks.

"Mother?"

The girl sobbed and hiccupped quietly, leaning a hand against the glass. Walter stepped toward the girl slowly. Eileen wasn't sure if he was even seeing the same thing she was. How could anyone not be taken aback in confusion and fear?

"Leave me alone… please just leave me alone…" The little girl's voice came.

"Don't cry, Mother…" Walter said quietly.

Eileen took this chance to sneak out of her hiding place.

"Why won't they stop laughing at me?"

"Who's laughing? I'll kill them for you, Mother. I won't let anyone make you cry. No one will ever make you suffer, Mother…"

The girl gasped and looked to her right, then suddenly drifted away into the darkness. Before Walter could react, a hard blow to the back of the head from a baseball bat sent him to his knees. As he slumped forward, Eileen dashed out of the tank quickly, slipping on the glass as she leapt.

A glowing red sign over a door that read, "EMERGENCY EXIT" was like a godsend to her. Eileen quickly pushed the door open and was led out into the outer edges of the park. She recognized the area beyond a chain link fence clearly, even in the darkness. A long, almost infinite looking field lay before her, and just to her left in the distance was the same west gate she had been trying to reach the entire time. Eileen had made it out of the cursed Munson St. zoo. She sighed tiredly and smiled, looking up at the black sky, "Yes… Thank you, God."

Just across that field was South Neely St.

On South Neely St was Gregson's Ammunition.

Running didn't seem to take her fast enough. A wide smile stretched across her face as she awaited the distant sight of the concrete street. Further and further she went, before suddenly realizing that the field was far longer than she knew possible. A quick look back over her shoulder marked the red aquarium and orange hued zoo from hell far in the distance. If she went any further into that field, that zoo was going to disappear completely.

She was running straight into an abyss.

Eileen chose to continue running. She was not about to go running back to the zoo where a very angry serial killer would possibly awaken with a very sore skull. There had to be something at the end of that field. As she ran, the squealing and chirping of demonic creatures from the zoo had slowly faded into silence. Just when she felt she was ready to stop and rethink her plan, her radio began to crackle quietly. With that warning she held her baseball bat tightly as she approached the source.

Weeds and grass dwindled away until beneath her was grated metal. The air had been pleasantly cool in the field, but as her feet traveled the new territory that familiar humidity was slowly returning. She heard the trickling sound of running water beneath her, somewhere below. A look to her right revealed a hill with a small stream of black water running toward a far off, lonely tree.

_(the field it will not end)_

She heard a humming, almost like a mechanical buzz swoop past overhead. Eileen ducked down quickly, ready to swing her bat upward at whatever creature hovered above her. Whatever it had been, only a silhouette of it remained as it fluttered away. Whether it was some malicious form of a bird or an oversized moth or other flying insect, it was gone and the crackling of her radio faded back into a welcome silence.

Up ahead, hope was finally in sight. A distant, chain-link fence lay up ahead, and beyond, she could see street lights and South Neely St. When she reached it the only thing between her and an escape was a gate. It was then that her stomach sank, however. Nearing the fence, she realized that it was padlocked. In frustration she kicked the fence and sunk to her knees, letting tears spill over her dirt and blood-smeared cheeks.

_(the field it goes on forever)_

"Damn it…" Eileen choked, leaning tiredly against the fence. She couldn't simply climb over it no matter how much she wanted to. Barbed wire lined the top, and it was already littered with thin, mangled looking material she didn't want to get a better look at.

She knew that sitting there would get her nowhere. Eileen wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and stood. The flow of that small stream was a soothing sound in the silence.

The stream…

_(in trees beside the river bend)_

Eileen looked back at it quickly.

_(you left me with a feather)_

That cryptic message she had found earlier suddenly made more sense. There had to be some kind of escape by that huge tree she had passed on the way there. Eileen quickly made her way along the stream until she came to a towering, lonely oak. Its roots broke through the metal flooring, forcing itself into the emptiness beneath. It rose up higher than any normal tree, like something out of a children's fairytale standing alone in a twisted world.

Carved into the tree's thick trunk was that name again with a heart-shaped border. Eileen felt a familiar twinge in her gut when she saw the name.

**AVELYN PASSER & MICHAEL FINCH**

Lying on the dirt, on a small, sparse patch of grass was a small brown bird. It was dead.

Being an animal lover, Eileen hated the sight of dead animals more than anything. After all her failures and dead ends up until that point, the little feathered bird on the ground broke the dam. The tears wouldn't stop no matter how hard Eileen tried. Sprawled out and lifeless, something cruel had pinned the bird to the dirt with some kind of oversized needle.

Eileen looked away and rested against the thick wooden oak for support as she wept. She was lost, she was going to die, she was unarmed aside from the aluminum bat, she was trapped, and beside her was an innocent creature that met the sadistic hand of some monster.

She was unsure how much time had passed before she stood and began to leave the tree. Time no longer mattered to her.

Eileen gave the little bird one last mournful look before leaving. It was only then that she saw something other than the needle poking out between the feathers.

_What… the…_

She moved forward slowly, looking closer… was that… a key?

_Oh god, I can't…_ She cringed, covering her mouth at the thought of cutting the bird open for the key. Eileen turned away quickly, swallowing hard to fight back her disgust.

Slowly out of the darkness something tall and dark blue passed her. It was Walter. Eileen cried out in shock, and swung the baseball bat quickly, reacting before she could even think.

To her terror, Walter grabbed the end of the bat roughly, glaring at her. Eileen held on to the bat, staring back at him with wide, terrified green eyes. Even in the middle of fighting he had always worn the same calm, almost empty expression. When she saw anger crossing his normally placid face it sent a sick chill to her gut.

Eileen pulled the bat to no avail as Walter held it steady, just watching her in silence.

Finally he spoke calmly and slowly, "Stop hitting me with things."

She was unsure how to respond or react. A part of her wanted to wanted to pull the bat again and try to run. But she was locked there, trapped in some kind of death stare.

"I am not here to hurt you." He said.

Eileen shook her head, "How the hell do you expect me to believe you!? How do I know you're not lying?"

The anger in his eyes had eroded back into that distant, uncaring expression. Walter finally spoke after a painfully long silence, "…you don't."

With that, he released the end of the aluminum bat and Eileen backed away slowly, watching the tall man carefully. Walter looked down at the sandy colored bird pinned to the ground. He knelt down, unpinning it and picking it up. Eileen squeezed her eyes shut and turned away in disgust as he dug his fingers inside the tiny corpse and pulled out the metal key inside.

"You wanted the key, didn't you?"

Eileen opened her eyes to see his hand held out to her with a bloody key on his palm. She looked away again, cringing and groaning at the sight of the bird's entrails still wrapped on the key. Walter tilted his head slightly in confusion. He wondered what could be wrong with the key… it was what she wanted, wasn't it? It was then that he realized she was squeamishly turning away from the little organs stuck on the key.

He brushed it off and cleaned it on his already heavily stained coat. Once more, he held it out to her and spoke.

"Here. I cleaned it for you."

When she looked back, she hesitated to even take another step closer. After a long internal debate, she slowly reached forward, still holding the bat tightly in her other hand. When she felt the warm metal in her fingers she pulled away quickly and began to back away.

"Y-You're really… not going to hurt me?"

Walter shook his head slowly, "…No."

It felt like such a lie coming from him. Eileen's head ached slightly as a fragmented memory of him hitting her and beating her to a bloody pulp in her apartment flashed through her mind. He had left her body broken and near death, all to complete some demonic cult ritual. She could remember looking up at that long haired stranger as she lay dying in a pool of her own blood, wondering_ why_ all of this was happening.

"You attacked me in my own home…" Her voice quivered as tears stung her eyes, threatening to spill over as she fought to be brave, "How the hell do you expect me to trust you!? …Y-You nearly beat me to death, a-and… I"

Her world was growing hazy again, and she could hear something booming within her head, almost painfully as if coming from the back of her skull. The noise was almost deafening; the sound of churning liquid, the hum of some large machine. She wobbled wearily for a moment as the image of some bladed, spherical machine flashed in her mind.

"I-I…" Eileen felt the tears flowing once more. Walter watched her patiently with no discernable expression. She wasn't sure whether to be terrified or not.

"I can't remember anything." Eileen whispered, "What the hell did you do to me?"

The long haired man sighed and averted his eyes, "I understand. An apology could never suffice here. But…"

"You're damn right it wouldn't!" She picked herself up quickly and began to step away, voice full of anger, "You'd be lying anyway! You're not sorry, you sick murderer! Don't even think that anyone would forgive you for what you did to all those people!"

With that, Eileen turned and ran. Walter lost sight of her as she climbed back up the hill. For a long time he stayed there beside the oak tree. There were too many thoughts in his mind and too much weight on his shoulders for him to pursue her. After all, it would not be the last time they crossed paths.

Angry thoughts coursed through her mind. It wasn't like her to think with such hate, but there was no denying the fact that Walter Sullivan had killed nineteen people, and possibly Henry. Nineteen people with lives and families, people who loved them, people they made happy. Hell, even people who probably hated them. But there was no reason for any of them to die so brutally. The only thing Eileen felt inside was a bitter tasting sense of hatred for that man.

Eileen made it to the padlocked gate, and quickly unlocked it. She pushed the gate open and looked around… it was most definitely South Neely Street. Gregson's Ammunition was somewhere down the road, she remembered.

How could he possibly think she would believe him? He had been pursuing her that whole time with an axe, a handgun, beckoning her to him like she was some kind of pet. Just how stupid did he think she was? Every problem in her mind found a way to back to him, and the anger made her knuckles go white from gripping the aluminum bat.

As Eileen began heading south, a chill swept over her body. She heard a very familiar noise in the distance, echoing along the streets. Eileen turned toward the source of the noise.

…_sirens?_

They became louder.

Closer.

Howling.

Deafening.

"My head…! Oh… not again… Ahh…" Eileen winced and her face twisted up in pain. Her head suddenly began to burn with a rolling, splitting pain. She dropped to her knees helplessly as her vision dimmed and the blaring air raid sirens tore through her ears. Finally, she felt her body begin to go numb and Eileen tiredly collapsed to the moist pavement.

Suddenly, everything was getting brighter… brighter… her eyes ached as the brightness became blindingly white fog. A figure in what looked like a long coat up ahead was walking toward her slowly. Eileen eyed the shadow tiredly, feeling that same restless sleep from before closing hungry jaws around her. Just before her consciousness was pulled from her, she realized that the figure held an axe, stained with dried blood.


	4. 04

**4.**

Rays of pale light trickled in through a circular window high above. Eileen groaned and shifted away, as if to escape the heavenly glow. Her head was sore, and there was a dull and coppery taste in her mouth. Eileen figured that terrifying nightmare must have made her bite her tongue in her sleep. As goosebumps began to rise on her skin, she felt around for her favorite warm comforter. It was no where to be found.

"Morning, Miss."

Eileen suddenly realized she was not in her bed, her room, or her apartment even. Her eyes opened and focused as she took in the bright settings around her. The hard surface beneath her was a smooth wooden bench. The high, vaulted ceilings above her made her think of some kind of church. Despite being groggy and weak, she pulled herself up quickly to see a man sitting on a bench across from her shuffling a small deck of cards.

"Who are you?" Her voice came out hoarse from a dry throat. Everything around her was cold… cold and dusty.

The man didn't look much older than twenty –five or twenty-eight. His shaggy brown hair hung in loose, untamed curls and thick dark stubble covered his smiling face. Shaking his head playfully he continued to shuffle the ornately designed cards and answered in a rather pleasant voice,

"Welcome to the Rosewater Museum. Stephen Aleister. Nice to meet ya."

Sitting up, Eileen swallowed weakly to wet her parched throat. Every limb on her body seemed to ache.

"Feeling alright?" He asked.

His friendly nature was more than welcoming after the unpleasant experience she had just awakened from. The joy of finding someone _normal_ made her want to throw her arms around him. Eileen realized how desperate she had become to hear another sane human's voice.

"…I feel like I just got put through a meat grinder."

Eileen watched warily as he laughed and replied, "Kind of a morbid sense of humor. Though I would probably say the same thing if I were in your shoes."

"Did… you bring me here?" Eileen asked, eying the cards. She recognized one as it flashed briefly before disappearing among the rest. He was shuffling a deck of tarot cards.

"Me? Nah, I just came in and saw you lying there. I thought to myself, _'This old museum is no place for a lady to sleep. She's gonna be food for some demon if I just leave her ass here.' _So I took a seat and decided to stick around till you woke up." He laughed quietly as he spoke, eyes still on his cards, "If anything came by, I'd take care of it."

The gray light cascading in reflected off of the black and white tile floor between the two. Looking down, Eileen wondered who could have possibly brought her there. Had it been Walter?

"Was anyone else here at all?"

Aleister shook his head, "Haven't seen anyone around this place in a long time. This is purgatory is what it is," he looked up at her with an almost boyish, mischievous smirk, "So how did you go out? Accident? Murder?"

"…what?"

His smile remained as a slightly confused look came across his face. He paused and leaned forward, lowering his voice, "Aw, you don't know yet, huh?"

Eileen eyed him nervously, trusting this man less with each moment.

"I got it. It must have been a suicide."

"What are you talking about?" Eileen shot back, sounding almost offended at his suggestion.

Without looking, Aleister drew a card from his deck and held it up for her to see. The dark imagery of a dark cloaked figure told all.

"Number fourteen. You're dead, girly."

The silence between them suddenly became tense. As if feeling the sudden discomfort, Aleister leaned back and grinned. He shuffled the card back into his deck and added, "Ah, I'm just fuckin' with ya. Death isn't always a bad thing. Transformation, completion, changes in your life. The death of the old ways and the rebirth of something greater… the card actually refers more to self awareness than physical death, y'know."

Eileen felt a slight glimmer of hope, "S-So I'm alive? Is this all some kind of dream? Am I really just sleeping somewhere, waiting to wake up in the real world? Right?"

Not looking back at her, Aleister chuckled and shook his head, "Nah, you're _dead_. You're like," he began to laugh quietly, "…like _really_ dead. Like we're talking buried in a casket six-feet-under dead or somethin'…"

Aleister's eyes rose up to meet hers as he spoke more solemnly, "You could've died years ago and you'd never know it."

Another painfully awkward silence ensued. Eileen shifted uncomfortably, staring back at the man. The red suit jacket he wore looked faded and dirty with age. Beneath it was an equally dirty white shirt and dark grey pants. He looked as if he had spent more than his fair share of time in the hellish world.

"H-how are you so sure?" Eileen tried not to sound as unsettled as she felt, "Are you dead? How do you know you're not just stuck in some serial killer's nightmare world?"

Another long silence washed over them.

He raised one eyebrow questioningly, still grinning quietly for a moment before letting out a soft chuckle and a confused, "…what?"

Eileen sighed, knowing that this man must have thought she was absolutely bat-shit insane, "Look, just forget it. I'm not dead, alright? I'm here because… some really strange shit happened. Involving a weird cultist and some ritual, I guess."

Aleister nodded attentively and held out the freshly shuffled deck of cards. Eileen looked down at the faded cards curiously—she could tell instantly that it was no simple Raider-Waite deck. The artwork was very rich and ornate with lacy, almost gothic borders.

"Think about what's heaviest on your mind. Shuffle them."

Eileen looked up at him for a moment—he was serious. She slowly took the stack of cards and began to shuffle them. She hadn't had a tarot reading since she was in high school at a friend's party. When she finished she passed it carefully back to Aleister, cautious not to drop them.

"…why are you…"

"Don't think about it, just do it."

There was too much on her mind to really focus on one thing. Where the hell was she, why was she there, how would she get out, was this guy serious about whether she was dead or not?

"Pick a lucky one."

Eileen was hesitant and eyed the cards nervously. She suddenly felt as if a dark cloud had rose up over her and begun to crush her under some invisible weight. Aleister tilted his head in slight confusion at her apprehension, "You want answers, right?"

Eileen forced a smile and shook her head, "Should I be so amused that the most solid answers I'm getting right now are from a guy I've never met with a deck of tarot cards?"

"I've always figured life throws you the best answers from the worst people."

"You can't be all that bad."

"I'm stuck here, so I did something wrong."

He didn't look threatening in the least, more scruffy and unkempt than anything else. But he had gentle brown eyes and a contagious grin.

Blindly, she pulled the _Five of Cups_. She handed it back to Aleister.

"Five of Cups, eh? …Bummer. That's a shitty one for a one-card draw." Aleister sighed.

"What does it mean?"

He shrugged, finishing the rest of the card spread, "Well, your answer's going to disappoint you."

"Why?"

"Disappointment. It's not that bad being dead, you know."

"Stop saying I'm dead."

"You'll be thinking a lot about something—'what could have been', 'what used to be'. You'll feel a lot of grief, like you made the wrong choice. A word of advice, don't beat yourself up over it. It wasn't your fault. There's something very important to you, something close to your heart that you have recently lost. Not just any loss, but something that hurt like hell."

"…my neighbor. Henry. He saved my life, and… I have no idea if he's even alive or not." Eileen gazed down at the tile floor.

"Y'know, part of the thing about this card is that in spite of all the grieving you're doing over what you've lost, there's something you still have. Here, lemmie do a better reading. One card spreads are shit anyway, maybe you'll get something less vague."

"Is this going to take a long time?"

Aleister shuffled the card back into his deck, "So I'm really feeling suicide here. Did you?"

Eileen shot Aleister a cold glare as he chuckled and shuffled the deck, "No! I didn't kill myself, I'm not dead!"

He held his hands up in a playful defensive gesture as he laughed, "Hey, hey, whoa, I'm sorry! Didn't mean to prod like that! Here, clear your mind and focus on what's eating you. You a leftie or a righty?"

"…Right."

"Alright, draw ten and think about it, alright?"

She gave a weary sigh and stood, stretching her sore limbs and looking over toward the door. Eileen was not in the mood for another reading—she had always been unlucky. She didn't need a random tarot reader to tell her that. Even fortune cookies seemed to loathe her.

"No thanks. I've got to figure out what to do next. …I need to get to that gun shop on South Neely's."

Aleister was tucking his cards away into his coat pocket and teased, "Gun? Should I trust you alone with a gun?"

Eileen was walking toward the door when she cast him another narrow-eyed stare, once again met by that jokester smile.

"I'm jokin, I'm jokin! Sorry, I just don't know when to quit." Aleister stood and looked up at the tall, round glass window above the door. Everything was pale out from that ever-present fog, "Look, I wouldn't go out there. You got your critters, your spitters, your sprawlies, your creepy crawlies, it's a blood bath out there. Maybe you can find something in here to take with you if you gotta go so bad?"

"I had a baseball bat." Tiredly rubbing her temple, Eileen glanced back at the bench she had woke up on. There was no sign of the baseball bat she had found before. She cursed under her breath, trying to imagine what had happened to it, "Have you seen it?"

The tall, curly-haired man shrugged, "I haven't. Whoever brought you here must have taken it as a souvenir."

"Damn it, Walter…" Eileen groaned.

"It's _'Aleister'_." He corrected.

"No, Walter, he's…"

"Cheating ex-boyfriend you died for?"

"No… what… what is going on in your head? No! No! God, no!" Eileen half-laughed, "I'm not suicidal!"

"So I've heard."

Eileen was getting ready to give this guy a swift kick in the face, "You know what, you're—"

A loud crashing noise from above startled the two of them—the sound echoed out from the balcony in the high, far end of the lobby and was followed by some monstrous, pig-like screaming and a woman's deep, throaty laughter. Sickening chops and thuds were heard with the squealing, and her voice sounded like that of a sadistic maniac.

"I'm shittin' my pants that's what I am! Jesus… d-did you _hear_ that?!" Aleister breathed quickly, before making his way for the door.

"It sounded like a woman laughing… and something dying." Eileen still looked up past the balcony, knowing the sound came from some room or hall beyond. The laughter died down not long after the creature's death cries were silenced with a final wet, sickening hack.

"It's gotta be that crazy bitch. I'm gettin' the hell out of here. I don't got much going, but sweetheart, you can join me if you like." Aleister turned the heavy, almost antique doorknob to find it stiff and locked in place. He stepped back and watched irritably as it began to fade slowly and rust over, before adding, "…or I would be if the lock weren't broken."

He stepped back, giving the tall, heavy wood doors one last dismissing glance before throwing his arms up in the air, "I hate this place. I really do. Shit gets rusty."

Eileen was already looking around for some way to defend herself. A tall wax model of a civil war era soldier held a heavy replica rifle with a sharp, attached bayonet.

Moving quickly across the lobby, Aleister was trying the other doors. Three of the five doors in the room proved to be locked thus far. He glanced over at her, "You know that's not a real gun, right?"

She gave a few test swings and stabs before replying, "I still wouldn't want to get hit with it. Would you?"

Aleister shrugged, "Not in public."

He turned another door knob and cursed, stepping back and worriedly eying the balcony as another monster broke the silence in an ear-splitting cry of agony. It was much closer than the last, and the sound of flesh and bone being crushed under a heavy, blunt object was stomach-churning. Again, that woman's voice joined the violent cacophony.

"This door's locked too… I'll be damned if I have to go in the direction that _banshee_ is in!"

"Is that _banshee_ someone you know?" Eileen asked, catching up to Aleister as he made his way to the remaining door.

"She's some demented bitch from that old cult. I don't know what she's in for. Probably murder, knowing her. I don't know, she's just some sick freak who gets her jolly's off by mutilating those monsters. As if they weren't ugly enough already." Aleister explained quickly. The door opened and he gave a short, victorious cheer, "Alright! Found a door that isn't broken. Come on, this place is bound to have a few emergency exits somewhere."

Eileen followed him into a hallway far darker than the pale-lit lobby. In the shadows she could see ugly viridian green wallpaper with a floral print. A few old paintings hung on the wall of the town's iconic Toluca Lake. The material wrinkled beneath the glass frames as if exposed to moisture.

"You comin?"

Eileen turned her attention back to Aleister and jogged quietly after him in the hall, "Yeah. Yeah, wait up."

After passing through musty-scented corridors and passing an emergency exit rusted shut, the sounds of death became faint. Silence overtook the halls, and Eileen wasn't sure if that silence was welcome or even more ominous. At least with sound, she knew where that woman was. Ahead of them stretched another long hallway leading to an elevator and a stairway to the second floor.

"Think that elevator works?"

Eileen followed Aleister and curiously glanced up into the dark passage above the stairs as she walked.

Her stomach sank as she fought back the urge to freeze in terror. Just for a moment she saw a flash of red pass slowly, and that woman's voice whispering almost incoherently.

"_I'll kill them all… all of them for you. No one will ever tarnish your precious body again…"_

The tall woman dragged a bloody, mangled corpse of some kind of monster behind her. The sound of its moist flesh dragging on the wood floor was the only thing Eileen could hear. Aleister looked up and saw it, quickly grabbing the fear stricken Eileen by the arm and pulling her into the shadows beneath the stairs.

"_S-Such a sick god, isn't it…? Sick, sick god… to just __**forgive **__those sinners… disgusting…"_

"We gotta go, come on." Aleister whispered, leading Eileen down the hall.

A set of double doors Eileen had not seen before took them into a large room with a civil war themed wax doll exhibit. She looked around nervously, hearing something low and droning above them, like some kind of machine. With a quick hop over the velvety display ropes, Aleister was already looking around at the mannequins with the same idea Eileen had—to use the replica weapons as a kind of blunt object.

Laughter from the floor above them so maniacal and crazed with blood lust made Eileen jump and tighten her grip around the heavy replica gun. Aleister looked up at her, just as wide eyed and tense as she. With a finger over his lips he gestured for her to keep quiet.

As the laughter died down for a moment a sickening thud was heard followed by a monster's squealing death cries. Another thud and the splitting of flesh and bone could be heard under its wails. The woman's muffled voice cried out, "YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD GET AWAY, DIDN'T YOU?"

The little walkman radio Eileen had fixed to her pocket began to buzz quietly with static. Eileen looked down at it with a degree of uncertainty, knowing full well what that meant.

"Hey! Get down! Behind you!!" Aleister cried.

Eileen turned just in time to see another wall man bursting forth from a pool of black, maggot-ridden slime. She screamed as its unhinged jaws opened wide for her and its arms reached out as if to suck her into a deadly embrace. Unlike the previous half-emerged wall-bound men she had seen in the zoo, this one's arms became like flesh colored blades where hands should be. The shape of the wall man's arms reminded her more of a praying mantis than anything else.

Bolting away she felt it's surprisingly sharp blade tip dragging across her chest, leaving behind a trail of bright red blood. Eileen winced at the stinging pain and fell to the ground. Aleister rushed to her and pulled her out of the mantis man's reach quickly. The radio at her hip was now blaring with static that they both knew the madwoman on the second floor could hear. But that was the least of their worries as three, six, ten more mantis men were emerging from the vaulted ceiling overhead and the walls around them.

"Stay close!" Aleister helped Eileen to her feet and quickly eyed the area for an escape. As a mantis man rose up beside them, Eileen swing the butt of the gun down into its skull. The creature's skull caved in easily as thin bone shattered beneath the rifle. She turned away in disgust and followed Aleister between the growing clusters of demons.

Together, she and Aleister dove through a set of double doors at the opposite end of the room. However, there was no escape from the foul smelling black oil that was bubbling up out of cracks in the walls and forming pools which mantis men would rise out of. From beneath paintings and from shadowy corners beside them, they were coming at them from every angle.

"Jesus, they're all coming out of the woodwork now. What the hell did you do to piss them off?" Aleister breathed.

"What did _I_ do?" Eileen spoke irritably.

Aleister led the way down the hall, weaving between growing black puddles and dodging the hissing heads of upside down mantis men from the ceiling. Eileen could hear and feel the large white maggots exploding beneath her feet as she stepped over and through a few shallow black puddles.

Around the corner, the two had escaped to a deceivingly safer looking hall. They passed a set of stairs and another bend in their path until they both froze and dove back. Peering into the corridor they almost entered revealed that woman from before.

Her back was turned to them, and with her short, chopped black hair and tall body she could have easily been mistaken for a man in some kind of deep red ceremonial robe. Eileen had glanced out when she was in mid-swing, and brought a heavy, large axe down on a squirming monster. Its naked legs with dead-gray flesh were kicking fiercely in spasms and agony. Its upper body could not be seen in the shadows past the woman in red.

Blood was trickling across the wood floor past the woman's black boots and the creature was starting to go still. Eileen could hear the woman's frantic panting as she continued to bring the axe viciously, giving a primal war cry with each swing.

"No matter how much I smash your skull in you still move… why won't you **fucking DIE**?" She bellowed.

"There's an exit over there…" Aleister whispered almost inaudibly. Eileen looked over to where he was pointing—just across the madwoman's corridor was a connected passage to a door with a glowing red "EXIT" sign overhead. It would be easy enough to quickly dive into that hall, but they absolutely could not alert the deranged sadist nearby to their presence. Her replica rifle and his hatchet were no match for a large, bloody axe.

The woman began to chuckle, bringing one bloody hand up to her face to wipe away sweat, unintentionally smearing more blood on her chalky skin. One arm was covered in a dirty, long sleeve, but the other arm's sleeve was torn just below the shoulder. The torn away material was wrapped around her arm, which had a long, deep scar cut deep into her flesh. It was almost completely covered by her makeshift bandage but there were still long trails of dried blood coming from the edges. She was by no means slender and fragile looking. Almost as tall as Aleister, Eileen could guess, and built rather athletic, the woman was like a tank. A six-foot-tall brick wall of pure strength and rage.

"I'll just have to smash you more and more…" She giggled, "You're a worthless piece of shit, you know. …you disgusting, filthy, perverse piece of shit!"

Eileen winced as the woman went back to mutilating the lifeless creature. It was that moment which she and Aleister took to move quickly and quietly into the adjacent hall. To their left, an ornate cusped arch led into a long, vaulted walkway that connected to a transept in the heart of the museum. She heard Aleister grunt and give an almost comical whimper.

He was rubbing his arm gently and stepping away from the door as Eileen approached him, "Are you alright?"

"I hate this place." He sighed after failing to force the door open with his shoulder.

"Here, let me help."

Together the two pushed against the door, hearing the woman continue her work on the corpse with no end in sight. Harder and harder they pushed, feet slipping slowly beneath them as the door refused to budge. Finally, Aleister cursed bitterly under his breath and stepped back.

"I really hate this place. The door's suddenly a century old."

"I hear you, just keep trying alright?"

He nodded and the two continued to push on the door, feeling it begin to move slightly. Crusty dirt and grime was beginning to sift down onto the floor from the edges of the door. Encouraged, they worked even harder to push the door open. Eileen could almost see a sliver of light needling its way in through the rust.

Then the static began. Eileen cursed, working to turn the radio off when the woman around the corner stopped and perked up in interest. The static was quickly becoming louder as Eileen cursed repeatedly beneath her breath. Her fingers slipped over every button, knob, and switch she could find. Nothing was working, the thing was almost possessed.

"Eileen!"

At Aleister's voice, she looked up and saw a creature at the end of the hall turning toward them. Shaped like a small and skinny, gray human with an oversized head, the creature was encased in a box-like frame and moved slowly, _hovering_. Eileen gripped the rifle, ready to attack as the creature made a sound reminiscent of a sickly, mucous ridden cough.

Before the creature could begin toward them, the woman ran and leapt out at the creature with her axe, laughing wildly.

"Come on!"

Eileen followed Aleister down the vaulted walkway. They were racing for their lives as another one of the locked up, large headed creatures hovered down from the shadows of the high ceiling. Floating almost ethereally, the small body inside the metal frame was twitching its head wildly and emitting a rhythmic, almost hypnotic screeching noise. As the noise rose and reached a peak in volume, a long, tentacle-like appendage shot out from its face-less head and narrowly missed Eileen's waist. The appendage clanked against the marble floor loudly, signifying some kind of bladed tip.

Entering the left wing of the transept, Aleister led the way up some stairs. As Eileen looked aside, she saw that the great transept with its high, shadowy ceiling was like some kind of haunting ground for these ghostly, slow moving creatures. They were all hovering down slowly from the shadows above and moving toward them slowly, some with twitching heads and others deathly still. She turned away, feeling a terrified chill within her.

Outside, whatever gray light was filtering in through dirt covered windows was beginning to burn out. The dimly lit transept went almost pitch black, causing the creatures Eileen had dubbed _boxheads_ to take on a dull crimson shine. The bodies remained pale and gray, but the metal framing around them slowly began to glow like some kind of bedroom nightlight.

That same low, violent rumbling of the earth she had heard before was returning. Eileen was filled with a sickening sense of dread as she climbed the tall flight of stairs behind Aleister. Something outside was _coming for her_, and she could hear it very clearly. She knew that even inside, she wasn't going to be able to escape.

"What the hell is that?!" Aleister cried.

Before Eileen could respond, he suddenly fell behind. She had just reached the top of the stairs when he was dragged down by his leg. A thick gray appendage was wrapped around his leg and blood was spilling from his calf where its bladed tip sunk in. Aleister screamed and turned to the fast approaching boxhead.

"Aleister!!"

The metallic cacophony of the boxheads combined with the deep rumble of the darkening world around her became overwhelming. The walls began to whither. Flakes of paint and wood began to splinter off and fade away into the air, revealing grated metal and rust colored walls behind them. Eileen reached down for Aleister only to watch him begin to "peel away" from existence as well. As if he were a moving, flat photograph with tearing paper, he too began to disappear little by little.

Eileen cried his name again in terror as he began to swing the hatchet at the approaching boxhead, but his cries became more and more distant until finally fading into silence. Eileen became lightheaded and almost nauseous as the hall around her finished its hellish metamorphosis. She pulled back onto the second floor just in time for the stairs to crumble and fall into dust beneath her. A loud, screeching metal sound announced protruding barbed wires to cover up the hole where the stairs had once been, sealing Eileen in the crimson-lit metal corridor.

When all was silent Eileen felt a sickening sense of aloneness.

Aleister was gone. That kind hearted, funny man with the tarot cards was gone and locked away with those boxhead creatures.

"DAMN IT!" Tears stung at her eyes and Eileen hit the wall in frustration.

Leaning against it tiredly, she began to sob quietly, _"I don't want to be alone…"_

With a loud cry she voiced her thoughts bitterly to whatever entity pulled in this new, terrifying world, "NO! I DON'T WANT TO BE ALONE!"

Something in the metal rafters overhead scurried away into the darkness like a lizard in a predator's sight. Eileen looked up at the source of the sound to see nothing but pitch black darkness beyond the rafters. She sunk down to the floor, crying and pulling her knees to her chest. She winced at a sudden bolt of pain along a shallow, red cut. Although a wound on her chest which she had taken earlier was beginning to heal, it still left her with a dull, stinging pain.


	5. 05

**5.**

Eileen dried her tears, unsure of how much time had passed. She looked over at the barbed wire barricade, only able to pray for Aleister's safety. The image of him being pulled away by one of those boxhead monsters tore at her. Guilt was merciless.

"I'm so sorry, Aleister…"

There was no time to sit around and blame herself; she had to continue looking for some kind of escape whether alone or not. Eileen rubbed at the cut on her chest, just below her collarbone gently. It stung, and seemed to burn a little more as she rose to her feet. She knew that she would soon come to forget and ignore it. Up ahead, the corridor turned around a corner where some bright red light awaited. Something was written in blood on the walls that she could not yet see, but left a tense feeling in her gut. Anything written in blood couldn't be good in this place.

A tickling sensation just below the cuff of her Capri pants made her scream and jump. Eileen swatted madly at the small green bug that tumbled off toward the ground, fading away into ashes. The radio at her hip began to emit low, quiet static. Eileen was certain that she did not want to wait around to find out what was causing the static and began down the passage.

Reaching the corner, she looked over to see that a large, red light bulb over a door was humming silently above a slanted door. The entire stretch of hallway was twisted—in no logical or possible way, the room was slanted and twisted. It reminded her of something out of _Alice in Wonderland._ Written on the walls were those foreboding messages—

_DON'T HURT ME_

_DON'T TOUCH ME_

"Nice. Not creepy at all." Eileen sighed.

She held on to the wall as she stepped out into the twisting passage. The squishy, fleshy floor soon dissolved into an ugly metal grating that groaned beneath her feet. She soon made it to the door, and cringed at the warm blood on the knob. She turned it and pushed the stubborn door open. Before her was a …a drop?

She saw a floor a few feet ahead and all around the edges of the doorway was the ceiling of the connecting room. Lights hung normally, and sticking her head through the door gave Eileen the sensation of being pulled. She gripped the edges of the door frame to avoid falling, but slipped out at gravity's pull. With a sharp shriek she crashed onto the floor and the door slammed shut above her. Written on the door was,

_DON'T TOUCH ME_

_DON'T COME NEAR ME_

_DON'T TALK TO ME_

_DON'T LOOK AT ME_

Eileen had fallen into a room that was now "right-side-up" to her and decorated with life size wax models. Unlike the ones from before, these were an ugly, ochre color and unclothed. The detail and the anatomy were very realistic, and the models were molded into protective, curled up poses. Many of them were on their knees with their arms wrapped around their bodies. There were a few taller models curled over the smaller ones with their arms bolting forth and merging into the necks of the figures beneath.

Quiet groans and metallic squeals from the below the grated floor came from far smaller looking boxheads. They hung from the floor beneath her in small clusters of four to five, huddling together like a litter of small animals. From their stillness, Eileen could only guess that they were either sleeping or too small to have an interest in her. Yet she stood quietly and began to walk toward a tall double-door nearby.

Painted on the door was another one of those red circles with rune-like symbols. Over the door's frame hung a realistic painting of plush, slightly parted lips.

She could hear something faintly as she approached the door—it sounded like breathing. Shivering breaths and just barely she could hear whispering. Eileen had to become very still and even hush her own breathing to try and make out what it was saying. However, the voice was speaking much too fast and far too quiet for her to make out the words.

Eileen tried to open the doors, but as she expected, they were locked. She sighed and looked back at the wax dolls tiredly. There had to be another exit somewhere.

It was then that a particular display of wax dolls caught her eye. She took a quivering breath as she saw a small wax figure pinned down beneath a much larger one with its hands around the childlike model's neck.

"Jesus…" Eileen whispered, approaching the disturbing image.

The fast paced whispering suddenly stopped as she knelt down by the display. The figure atop was definitely an adult strangling a child. From the adult's mouth hung a long wire. Eileen pulled on it but found the wax to be too hard to release it. A bead of moisture dripped off of the adult's forehead onto the child's face. Eileen realized that the "tears" on the child's face were dried droplets of wax that had fallen from the body above it. She couldn't understand why moisture was dripping down—nothing was near that could melt it…

"_Melt it…"_

At that moment Eileen dug out the small lighter and held it up to the adult's mouth. Hot wax began to drip down and form a hollow space around the wire. She winced when the hot liquid landed on her wrist and dried quickly, but she was determined to get to the prize buried in the waxy skull. She could see something dark and small in the depths of the adult's head at the end of the wire. The closer she got the more it looked like a key.

"Come on… melt…" She whispered.

The flame on the lighter suddenly began to shrink and dwindle. Eileen cursed bitterly as she flicked it again, begging it not to go out. When the plastic lighter finally gave its last useless spark, she sighed and rose to her feet. On the other end of the display room was a door… she wondered if there was either another way out or a matchbox somewhere in the building.

Eileen entered the next room. It was long and looked more like a dining hall than anything else. The sound of insects chirping and hissing caused her to look to the floor. There she found that it was almost invisible under a carpet of dull-colored praying mantises. She gasped and leapt onto the dusty, table, quickly kicking off any bugs that tried to hitch a ride on her legs or pants.

She looked down the table to see plenty of unlit candles and fancy china dinnerware. But there was nothing of use. At the far end of the room was yet another door which potentially held something useful. Eileen stood and began to walk across the table. The candles would have been handy if she had a match or a working lighter.

"_The floor is pulsing with praying mantises… this is gross."_

"Mother…"

Eileen was startled at the sound of the calm and familiar voice. She looked up to see another grated metal ceiling that formed the floor of some long hallway above. Looking down at her was the man with the long, bloodstained blue raincoat.

"Walter?"

A smile formed over his normally stoic face as he knelt down.

"I found you, Mother."

Eileen couldn't help but continue feeling rage against him. While seeing another human face gave her a degree of comfort, _his _face was hardly a welcome one. She knew that he had the power to make things change, just as he had made that lock in the zoo wither away or how he made Henry's apartment transform just like the museum had.

"Are you doing this? Turning this into some kind of twisted playground?" Eileen demanded.

The smile on his face faded slowly as he averted his gaze. He was quiet for a moment and his eyes had a look of deep thought. Eileen began to wonder if he was going to lie to her and was thinking up some kind of excuse.

"Did you?" Eileen asked irritably.

He looked back at her wordlessly.

"Every time this place changes, I see one of those red marks somewhere! You're doing this, aren't you?"

He shook his head and quietly answered, "No."

Frustrated, Eileen stared down at the table. Fixing an uninterested stare on one of the china plates she went on, "Walter, why am I here? What the hell is going on?"

"The Holy Mother is finally awakening."

"Awakening? Walter…"

"Yes?"

Eileen was silent for a moment, doubting for a moment that he would even explain it to her. But there was the possibility that he would explain… she was still unsure of how much trust she could put into him, "What is the Holy Mother?"

"You are, Mother."

Anger began to fill her. She was again just another part of his sick cult ritual. Before she had been the twentieth victim, titled the _Mother Reborn_, and now she was this _Holy Mother_. Henry had mentioned something to her about that before, but was vague on the details. After all, Henry had been the one to read every scrap of paper they found and take in every piece of information they came across. He must have known far more about Walter's ritual than he shared.

With rage in her voice, Eileen yelled at Walter, "What if I don't want to be? What if I don't want any part in your crazy rituals?"

Walter's look was hard to read—it was not stoic and indifferent, yet she wondered if it was her only her imagination that saw guilt in his eyes. Eileen was content to believe it was just her imagination.

Eileen's voice became gentler, as she was too tired to try and argue or fight anyone verbally, "I just want to go home. Let me go already…"

She looked up at him, pleadingly, "…get me out of here?"

Sighing, he again averted his gaze. She knew that he wasn't about to give any answer she would like.

"I can't." He replied.

"You can't?" Eileen groaned. She ran a hand through her messy hair and sighed. Her tone became slightly optimistic as she looked up at him and asked, "Well, do you at least have a lighter?"

"…what?"

"I need a lighter. Do you have one?"

He was visibly caught off guard by the new request. In fact, Walter just looked simply confused, as if he hadn't heard her right. When the thought was processed he began to dig through the many pockets of his jacket, "…I don't think so."

With a sigh, Eileen began walking down the table. She cringed at the sound of a stray praying mantis being crushed under her foot. Following overhead, Walter was still rummaging through his pockets. There was almost a kind of defeated tone in his voice.

"I do not have one. I'm sorry, Mother."

Eileen looked up at him slowly and replied, "Would you stop calling me that? I'm not your mother. It's kind of weird, and you're already weird enough."

"Weird?"

Eileen came to the door. There would be just a short jump over the sea of praying mantises and she would be out of there. For just a moment, she was a little disappointed to go solo again. But she knew firmly that Walter could not be trusted, no matter how sincere he tried to be. Especially after his ritual made her some kind of "Holy Mother", she couldn't help but wonder what effect that would have on her. All she knew was that the Holy Mother was a very powerful and important figure in his religion. There was no telling what kind of curse he had just put on her.

"Walter… am I the one doing this? If I really _am_ that Holy Mother thing? Just like when you made that world from your mind?" Eileen looked up at him, trying to mask the fear in her voice. He could sense it easily as she continued, "Is this all my fault?"

"…have you ever been here before?"

Eileen thought hard, trying to remember what Aleister had called it. Rose… Rosewater Museum. It sounded familiar to her, conjuring up mental images of an almost gothic-styled, church-like building in the southern end of Silent Hill, on the way to South Vale. As a little girl she had seen it in Silent Hill, but she knew very firmly that she had never been inside. The place was completely foreign to her.

"No. No, I really don't know where I am. All I know is that it's called the Rosewater Museum. I've never been here though. Not even when I lived in Silent Hill."

Walter sighed and calmly responded, "Then I do not think you are the source of this."

"Do you know this place?"

He shook his head, staring off into space almost dreamily, "I do not."

"Right. Well, thanks."

Walter looked down, snapped out of his thoughts. Eileen hopped down off of the table and exited through a door. It was only then that he realized the wall before him was a dead end.

The chamber Eileen had stepped into looked like the grounds of some kind of elaborate ritual. Cryptic symbols carved into brass plates decorated the walls and long strings of some familiar-looking ancient language were carved into tall marble pillars. It reminded her of runes, but she knew them all too well from an obsessive interest throughout high school that these were not common runes. Taking a closer look at one of the pillars, she saw a string of glyphs she recognized as _rovásírás_, or old Hungarian runes. Her memory of this set of the tenth century script was foggy, having spent more time in high school obsessed with _futhark _runes. Yet still she recognized them, vaguely remembering their corresponding sounds.

"…D… a… lia?" She read aloud slowly. Adjacent to the marble pillar was another with unrecognizable glyphs and one string of _rovásírás _runes that said,"Aliser".

Further down, along the miniature chapel were bodies lining the wall, six on each side, wrapped up in thick canvas bodybags. Their heads were wrapped up tightly, and bloodstains denoted where horrible things happened over their eyes, noses, and mouths. Each body was hung by thin barbed wire around the neck, with their legs pulled tout beneath them by more wire. In a row, they hung along the path to another display of a heavy statue atop an altar covered in more of the unrecognizable runes.

The subject was a tall, long-haired woman wearing a flowing robe. In her bloodstained arms was a child wrapped almost bundle-like in beautifully designed fabric—Eileen realized that the leathery fabric covering the two bodies was an aged 'hide' of flesh. As one arm held the child to her breast, another arm was raised over it, as if in some kind of symbolic gesture. Before looking away, Eileen noticed a mark carved into the woman's forehead, resembling a waxing crescent and a waning crescent both bordering a circle representing a full moon. She had seen it before, an old earth religion symbol of the triple goddess, but something else about it seemed familiar. As if she had just seen it moments ago… had she? Eileen thought back to the paintings she had seen in the halls.

Below the statue on the heavy stone altar were plain English words carved on a metal plaque that was bordered with a single gold line, and a silver 'vine' weaving around it.

_Hear my words, children of our Holy Mother, spoke the Yellow God  
For the yellow moon and the crimson sun will soon meet._

_Thus, we have been born harbingers of sacred order_

_Hear my words, children of our Holy Mother, spoke the Yellow God  
For the sacrifice is nigh, shall we cross together the bridge of flesh?_

_Herald the most blessed rebirth of our Holy Mother_

_Offer up the sinless blood, spoke the Yellow God  
For your holiest devotion is your sword the purest truth is your shield._

_Hear my words, for I am the Vessel of the Flesh, _

_Lobsel Vith  
_

Eileen stepped away from the altar, feeling a sick chill inside of her. She could only imagine what kind of ties this place had to that cult that twisted Walter into what he was. That cult which led her to that very point, trapped in a hellish world.

On each wall bordering the altar was an ornate door, one painted a dull yellow and the other a warm red. The yellow door held a symbol for a crescent moon while the red door held a symbol for the sun—a circle with a strong bullet mark in the center. One door to a Yellow Moon and one door to a Red Sun.

Eileen moved to the Red Sun door first, only to find it locked. With no other option but the Yellow Moon door, she entered the unlocked room cautiously. To her disgust, the room was lined with more bagged bodies, even bloodier than the others, each with long metal bars buried deep in their torsos. Within the heart of the rusty steel room was an altar. Upon the altar was the figure of an infant, wrapped in bloody cloth. Pooling beneath it, the liquid spilled over the edges. A tall red sword was thrust into the heart of the unseen, wrapped up child.

"Oh, God…"

Eileen tore her eyes away in disgust, feeling tears stinging her eyes. She covered her mouth in horror as she prayed that the small body on the altar was not real. Beneath the altar was a thick, leather-bound book with ochre pages, and before it, placed upon a brass candelabrum was an unlit, amber candle.

"_The Yellow Moon and the Crimson Sun will soon meet…"_ Eileen thought, wondering if that inscription had been some kind of cryptic message. She moved slowly toward the bloody display, shuddering when she heard the hanging bodies around her begin to groan quietly. They were all still when she looked over, yet the unnerving sense of danger was terrifying.

Eileen moved slowly toward the altar, careful not to look at the figure—she knew she wouldn't be able to handle the sight if it were real. She knelt down and pulled the heavy, flax-colored tome from beneath the altar and gently opened it. Its pages were yellow with age and written all entirely by hand. On every single page was a border of runes and written within that border were many verses all in cursive latin. She sifted through the pages carefully as not to damage the ancient book.

One page she crossed had a small piece of girly pink memo paper hidden between the pages. It too was rather worn looking, but no where near as ancient looking as the rest of the book. Eileen pulled the memo page out and read the message written in neat, curly handwriting,

_Forgive me, Mr. Archbolt. But you have incorrectly transcribed the passage on verse 52, page 217.  
Please correct this before we begin the ritual. Like you said, perfection is the key.  
I finished your candle. I hope you enjoy it._

Eileen looked up at the yelow candle in the brass candelabrum. She then turned to page 217 of the old book, only to find that it had been torn out.

"_Looks like someone couldn't take a little criticism…"_ She thought, imagining this "Mr. Archbolt" tearing out page 217 in some kind of rage.

Reaching out, Eileen took the yellow candle from its place and decided that there may have been use for it, "Sorry Mr. Archbolt. I'm going to have to borrow this."

As Eileen stood and began to leave, a piercing scream tore through the silence. Eileen jumped and shrieked, turning around quickly; ready to swing the replica rifle at any approaching attacker. The infantile, blood curdling cry echoed in her mind but the room was empty. Eileen eyed the still bundle of blood stained cloth uneasily as she stepped out of the room.

She made her way back out into the chapel, and took another careful examination of the 'Mother' statue. There didn't appear to be any candelabrum missing a yellow candle anywhere. Then she noticed it—a small hole in the altar just beside the statue's foot. It was the perfect size for the candle, and she placed it inside. Pushing the candlestick in as far down as she could, she felt something click beneath.

The Red Sun door beside the display groaned and the sound of some mechanical device was heard, followed by the sound of some thick latch being pulled. The door had been unlocked.

Eileen quickly opened the heavy wooden door, only to find a tall painting with a richly detail mural behind it. Painted in warm shades and earthen tones was a robed child, pinned down to an altar made of heavy stones by a heavy sword. Two moons hung high in the sky overhead. One was yellow and one a deep, blood red. Beneath the painting was a haunting inscription.

"Yellow Mother, offer up the vessel, Red Mother, strike down the vessel." Unnerved, Eileen glanced back at the Yellow Moon room with the small body pinned to the altar beneath a red sword.

She touched the old painting before her, feeling the heavy wooden door behind it. The canvas was thick and stiffened by the oil paint, but the painting was torn at the mid-left section to allow a brass doorknob through. That however, was locked.

Eileen sighed tiredly, looking around the chapel for some kind of clue. There had to be some other exit or some other answer to this disturbing riddle. As she paced slowly before the statue, occasionally eying the slightly open door of the Yellow Moon room, she thought about the 'ritual' she was seeing. One mother offers a child to be sacrificed to a woman with a red sword… it was sickening, and chilling to the core. How could anyone do such a thing?

The statue looming over her stood tall and haunting. It held the child close with one arm, while another arm was raised with a rounded fist. At that moment Eileen realized with a sinking feeling in her gut just what that fist had been rounded for. She looked into the Yellow Moon room, seeing that small, slender red sword. As she looked back at the statue she realized it was making a sacrifice.

It didn't take more than a second for Eileen to begin back to the Yellow Moon room for the sword she had seen. Despite the sickening display of cruelty beneath it, she knew there was only one way out of that disturbing little chapel.

In the familiar Yellow Moon room, she moved quickly to take the small sword without eying the small body. It was stubbornly embedded in the body beneath it, moving slowly through the moist sounds of flesh and things Eileen didn't want to begin to imagine. After a bit of effort the sword slipped out and Eileen was met with joyful cooing and gurgling noises from the baby. She stepped back quickly, as the body beneath the cloth began to move.

Suddenly a small hand dropped out from beneath the moving cloth and landed hard on the tile floor below. It was a small porcelain baby's hand that cracked and lost two tiny fingers as it met the ground.

"…_Was it just a doll?"_

Eileen wasn't exactly interested in finding out.

She climbed carefully onto the stone altar, avoiding the yellow candle at the figure's feet and reaching up to slide the thin sword into the opening in its fist. Down it slid, narrow tip first until the thick base of the sword held steady between the palms and fingers. It stopped just above the child. Eileen stepped down, cautiously awaiting some kind of reaction. She tapped the tip of the heavy replica rifle against the floor anxiously as she waited.

Had she done something wrong?

With an irritated groan she opted to search the Yellow Moon room once more for something she might have missed. She made her way reluctantly, not excited to see that 'doll' inside and the groaning bodies that hung from the walls weren't the most welcoming crowd, either.

Just before she exited the chapel, another high-pitched scream rang out. Eileen bolted around quickly, gripping the rifle. Blood was pouring down the statue's arms and dress, flowing from the child in her arm. The statue's arm had moved, thrusting the sword into the infant, Eileen realized. As thin streams of blood began to rush down each fold and crevice of the statue's dress, trickling past bare feet and pooling on the altar below, the walls around her gave a deep, mechanical groan.

Beneath the statue's feet were carved indentations; the altar had been obviously designed to collect this blood through little canals in the marble. Each line directed the blood through a circular labyrinth of symbols that were filling quickly around the statue, forming a very familiar red circle. When the bloodletting was complete, the statue stood at the center of a double-ringed halo, and in the center of three circles and an intricate series of runes, some familiar, and some completely foreign.

The candle at the statue's foot suddenly lit with the tiniest flicker of light. As Eileen stepped into the center of the chapel, she watched in wonder as the tall, growing flame stretched upward. The fleshy material of the statue's robe was suddenly engulfed. Whatever had given it its soft sheen was obviously highly flammable. Eileen could only describe the sight as being like a dried Christmas tree going up in seconds beneath a raging inferno. The bold, orange light cast eerie shadows on the walls that seemed to dance around the burning, bloody sacrifice.

It all looked as if it were mimicking some sick ritual where crazed shadows danced around the burning, dying bodies of their chosen victims. Twisted machinery within the walls sung out in a metal cacophony, as the sound of chains rising and falling, bindings being pulled taut and heavy iron cogs turning could be heard. Eileen turned back quickly as she heard the twisting sound of the barbed wire that kept the twelve bodies behind her suspended. She brought a hand over her mouth in horror as she realized the wire was tightening around their throats, tighter, tighter, tighter…

Finally she shrieked and turned away as the sharp, metal wire tore through the thick material of their robes and flesh. Eileen didn't look back as she heard the sound of twelve bodies collapsing to the ground, their limbs torn and heads severed.

The statue's flames had ceased, leaving a blackened, nude form that held a pile of charred material where the infant had been. Just below its ribcage and above its navel was that circular symbol carved deep and bordering something that looked like it could be pulled out of the body. Nervously, Eileen stepped up onto the bloody, ashen altar and took the small knob at the center of the circular mark. Pulling it out revealed a long, slender needle with a notch at the end. Eileen took a glance over at the Red Moon door's painting—the doorknob protruding had just the hole in its center where she knew this needle belonged.

With her newfound key she quickly opened the door and carefully made her way inside.

A female figure was writhing, her back curled and face contorted in a mix of terror and agony. Eileen stepped in to see one of those wax dolls from before rising up out of the floor. Its still, pale body looked rough and incomplete. With only its upper body standing tall above the tile floor, she could only imagine it was a work in progress. Not a very cheerful one, she thought, eying the way the pained woman held her arms protectively over exposed breasts.

"…Pleasant…" Eileen sighed, looking elsewhere in the room.

Shelves lined the rather wide room, and only a heavy desk to the side held any interest. The shelves were stocked with boxes and buckets of dried wax. Chisels and carving tools were scattered on the floor. At the far end of the room was a deep crack in the wall, revealing the familiar grated metal skeleton of the building, and more darkness beyond it. Below that crack in the wall was a familiar passage Eileen had seen once before in a philosophy class,

_The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,  
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit  
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,  
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it_

Who had written that, she wondered? She remembered her class relating it to the idea of 'you reap what you sow' when they spent a few sessions on the idea of karma. It had been just a quick detour brought on by a curious student asking about an off-topic subject. Their over-eager, somewhat scatterbrained philosophy teacher was quick to deviate from the lesson plan into a three day lecture on karma. That entire class had been rather easily derailed by his eagerness to try and explain every unrelated concept, she thought in retrospect.

Eileen then noticed a small blue strap down by her feet. She knelt down to examine it and pulled a blue child's backpack from the steel shelf. There was a cute design on it, white cats and crescent moons.

"_What's a little kid's backpack doing in a place like this? It's so cute…"_

She curiously unzipped it, seeing just a plain, age-worn notebook inside beside a loose piece of wrinkled paper. Eileen pulled that out first, finding it to be a letter written in scratchy, erratic handwriting.

_You know their ritual is doomed. Archbolt isn't going to do it, and I want you to pull out of the ritual. If you do it, you'll die! Why do you think he pulled out? Do you really believe he's just going to 'supervise'? He's a sick bastard and a coward. You watch, you'll see. This is all going to hell._

"_Why would a kid have a letter like this… and who is this Archbolt guy? Part of that crazy cult…? Something about that name is familiar." Eileen's thoughts were broken by the sound of footsteps coming slowly through the chapel._

"_Walter? …No!"_

As Eileen saw a heavy axe fly past the doorway and crashing into the tall, brass candelabra bordering the altar, she realized it was definitely not Walter. She quickly rushed for the desk, seeking a hiding place from that madwoman she had seen before.

The woman laughed as she swung the axe madly at the statue. Only after she was satisfied with the vandalism did she step down from the altar. Eileen held her breath as the woman stood out in the chapel, mere meters away from her. She jumped when she heard the sound of the madwoman turning around and smashing the yellow candle beneath her axe and giggle low and breathlessly. Then her footsteps were coming closer, moving into the Red Moon room.

Eileen shivered and squeezed her eyes shut. She clamped her hands over her mouth in effort not to scream or make a sound as the woman yelled out, "WHERE ARE YOU, YOU COWARD?!"

Her deep, raspy voice began to make an almost hissing chuckle as she lashed one muscular arm out and threw the shelf over. Its contents scattered along the ground and knocked over the half-finished wax model. Eileen opened her eyes and glanced at the floor beyond the small leg space beneath the desk where she hid. The woman's shadow was moving close.

"I know you're here, I know you're here, I know you're here, I know you're here…" she spoke frantically as she eyed the room. Her crazed, pale eyes beheld the knocked over wax doll and softened. Eileen listened as she knelt down before the doll and reached out. She stroked it's pained face and whispered something Eileen could not make out.

Suddenly the gentle whispers became erratic, angered words, "Y-You son of a bitch… you… you fucking sick…"

The woman bolted up and brought the axe down on the wax doll, hacking away at it mercilessly as she screamed wildly, "It's not her, it's not her, you liar, you're lying to me! YOU'RE LYING TO ME!"

Hacking away at the core of the wax figure caused liquid to spill from a hollowed core. Blood was splashing out of the doll and cascading across the tile floor. Eileen pulled her hand from the ground as the shallow red flood spread beneath the desk. The woman made primal cries as she tore into the doll, muttering incoherently.

"YOU'RE A FUCKING LIAR! You always have been a fucking liar, Archbolt…"

With her face smattered with both the blood of demons and the wax doll, the woman looked up at the cracked wall with wide blue eyes, "I asked for her… but instead you leave a whore in my path… I want her… I want HER. GIVE HER BACK TO ME."

Eileen heard her pause, and then suddenly begin to laugh silently, "You can never be my perfect, beautiful little… Oh? Oh, you don't say? Ahahaha… Ahahaha, AHAHAHA, OH YOU ARE A FUNNY ONE, ARCHBOLT. You are just so g-goddamn FUNNY!"

There was that name again—Archbolt.

Again she was hacking away angrily. Eileen held her knees close to her body and stayed perfectly still, praying silently for the woman to leave. She was completely gone, utterly batshit insane and violent. When the woman had her fill, she ceased the mutilation of the wax doll and stepped over it. The debris on the floor that had scattered from the fallen shelves and boxes crunched beneath her thick black boots as she made her way toward the crack in the wall.

"…is that…" She said quietly, peering into the wall with one wild pale eye. She tilted her head and grinned ear to ear, "I SEE YOU OVER THERE! AHAHAHA, OH WHY DON'T YOU COME OVER HERE AND JOIN THE PARTY?"

Her arm shot out and tore down another steel shelf, its contents loudly crashing onto the floor and burying the remains of the wax model. With her heavy axe, the woman was now chopping away at the wall. Eileen could hear it splintering and cracking beneath her powerful swings and began to wonder if she should take that opportunity to crawl out quickly. But would she even have somewhere to hide from that enraged psychopath?

"STAY THERE! I'M COMIN' FOR YA!" She yelled into the crack with that huge grin, "I'M COMING TO PLAY WITH YOU, JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!"

Eileen moved slowly and cautiously, opting to try and make her escape. But when the woman suddenly bolted around, hearing Eileen's clothes shifting, Eileen pulled back into her hiding place silently. The madwoman looked around thoroughly; head hung low and predatory as she gripped the axe tightly.

"…Marco?"

Like hell Eileen was going to reply, _"Polo"_ to that sick psycho.

Again she was tearing the wall apart and reaching the metal grating behind it. She swung hard, chipping away at the metal at first, making thick cuts through the wiring. Finally, in frustration, she threw her axe at the wall and stuck her head into the large crack. Eileen heard her speaking—but no voice replying.

"Yes?" The woman said, before answering to herself, "You… you are? I'm coming back then… don't move, don't move, don't move…"

She backed away and picked up the axe, repeating herself monotonously as she hurried out of the room, "Don't move, don't move, don't move…"

Eileen was jilted by the sudden noise of the door slamming behind the woman. She was finally safe, and the woman was finally gone. Crawling out carefully, Eileen stepped over the pools of blood and mess. That wax doll was completely mutilated, and the bright blood that trickled out didn't exactly conjure pleasant mental images. Even though it was not real, Eileen still turned away in disgust. That woman had made a huge gap in the wall, just big enough for Eileen to squeeze through if she were careful to avoid sharp edges of the tattered metal fencing. At that moment, exploring the area beyond that room seemed more appealing than following after that woman and potentially running into her somewhere in that chapel.

That familiar low drone of static began to ring out from her radio. She cursed and looked around the walls and ceiling—was the source coming from that new crack in the wall? As she approached it slowly, the radio's static died down… it had to be safer in there, she thought. Eileen peered into the shadowy room beyond, seeing a tall but narrow stained glass window and more boxes and wooden shelves lining the walls. It was a small room, and judging by its slanted ceiling, it must have been a closet or store room beneath a stairway.

Pushing aside loose, metal fencing, she squeezed through the narrow space. Splintering wood and sharp pieces of metal scratched at her legs, but Eileen pressed on. The inside of the closet was mostly dark, save for dark red light that was shining in through the window. From that light a glint of crimson on the floor caught her eye.

Eileen picked up a red, circular crest with a familiar design carved in. It was of a woman, she could tell, but most of the design was worn away. Bordering her were those same runic glyphs from the chapel. As she thought about it, Eileen remembered seeing the same image of that woman on the gray 'Saint Medallions' that Henry had given her before.

"_That's right… back in that crazy nightmare world, Henry and I had been chased by those… weird ghost things. They didn't come around us when we had those stone Saint Medallions. I remember Henry even gave me the last one to protect myself from those things."_ Eileen found herself fighting back tears as she remembered the way Henry fought so hard to save her.

She had been injured then, following him around with a heavy cast around her arm and a beaten, broken body. Those slow-moving, hovering human corpses pursued them with some kind of sick vengeance she did not understand. Throughout it all, she remained mostly in the dark about what was going on besides the fact that she and Henry were trapped in the world of some cultist serial killer. Walter.

Henry had to be alive somewhere—he wouldn't just give up or be beaten down by any of those monsters. Eileen moved on in the closet, looking for some kind of door. With some effort, feeling around the dark walls, she found it. However, it was locked. Frustrated, she knew the only way out was back through the wall and into that chapel. Hopefully by then, that crazy woman was gone. Clutching the rifle tight, she prepared for whatever remained in that room that was enough to make the radio give off its warning static.

Back into the ransacked wax model room, she was carefully eying each shadow for the source of that returning warning hum. Nothing… she made her way quickly to the door.

"Oh, God!!" She screamed, as opening the door revealed a hissing mantis man. Before Eileen could slam the door shut it pulled itself out of the dark, oily puddle on the floor from which it emerged and lunged at her. Those things had been terrifying enough when Aleister was with her.

Eileen landed roughly on her back as the creature pinned her down and cried out in some demonic, almost mechanical sounding voice. Its sharp blade-like arms flailed wildly to try and slice through her, but Eileen was quickly scrambling away. The weight of the creature above her was almost too much for her, but with a vicious yell she forced the heavy, oily creature off of her and frantically struggled for the rifle she had dropped.

The mantis man pulled one dripping arm back and hissed as it swung at her. Eileen shrieked as it brushed just inches over her back. Grabbing the rifle, she turned around and swung the heavy butt of the gun at the creature with all of her strength. The sickening crunch of bone and flesh beneath the heavy rifle was stomach churning, and the creature stumbled away from her in agony. As blood trickled from the shattered inside of its mouth, it bore its cracked fangs with a rabid scream.

Before Eileen could swing again, it lunged out and pinned her once more, dragging one of its blade-like arms across her thigh. Searing pain tore through her muscles as the creature drank up her terror with insatiable thirst. As Eileen kicked it in the chest with her uninjured leg, she scrambled to put distance between herself and the demon. When she heard it rushing after her, she turned around and thrust the end with the bayonet into its approaching body.

Eileen screamed as she pushed the bayonet deeper into the creature's chest. As if unfazed, the demon swung its knife-like arms at her and she worked frantically to keep away. She pushed it back once more, and then swung the bayonet down into its neck, unleashing a small cascade of dark, almost black blood. The creature flailed around as if in a seizure before finally being stilled by a final blow to the skull.

"_Is it dead…?"_ Eileen thought, realizing she was finally safe. Panting and wincing at the bloody cut on her thigh, she looked around for something to bandage it with. Seeing all the various art supplies that had scattered from the fallen boxes, she knew there had to be a rag or cloth somewhere. There was nothing, however. Eileen pressed down on the wound with her free hand and limped out into the chapel.

"_Jesus… she really tore this place up."_

The place already looked terrible with the dismembered bodies from before. But now any paintings that had hung on the walls were tattered by the madwoman's axe and the tall, burnt statue upon the altar was cracked and missing its head and sword-bearing arm. Eileen then noticed something about the statue—it was hollow on the inside and looked much lighter than she had thought. There was something red on the inside of the statue's back, just below the empty place where the neck joined with the shoulders.

Beyond the vandalized statue, the wall was also somewhat damaged—wood splintered away just beyond some candelabra and revealed something else that was dull and red. First things first, Eileen reasoned as she peered into the statue's hollow torso and saw another circular plate with the design of the Saint Medallion. She pulled it out with a little bit of effort and then moved toward the damaged wall behind the candelabra.

She hadn't seen nailed boards before, as it had been hidden behind some thick and velvety drapery. After that woman had come through and hacked away at the altar's statues and decorations, a half-torn curtain revealed that a door was hidden, boarded up and meant to be forgotten.

Eileen easily peeled the dampened, aged wooden board, but knew she would need something to pry the other five boards from the walls. The heavy replica rifle worked well, as she quickly revealed the tall, skinny, knob-less door behind.

Painted red and bearing three circular depressions—one filled by another circular plate with the Saint Medallion crest—Eileen knew precisely what this door was asking of her. The two heavy round plates she carried with her were placed inside with a low clicking sound, and together with the previously placed plate, all three formed a triangle of circles.

Eileen eyed the walls and ceiling carefully, following the sound of the 'machine' within the building. She could hear the heavy steel cables and thin, deadly barbed wire being pulled through whatever devices were hidden by the grimy walls. The red door began to rise slowly, revealing a dark and narrow passage.

As if the place wasn't claustrophobia-inducing enough already, she had to get more tight, dark spaces thrown at her. Inside were stairs—the ones that must have crossed over that closet from before. With her thigh still aching and bleeding, stairs did not seem like the best idea. But when given a route to take that she knew the madwoman had not, she opted for a little pain and safety over putting herself in that pscyho's path. Especially as slowed-down as she was.

The stairway rose up, dark and only lit at the top landing by a small, boarded up window. More, almost sunset-like crimson light brightened the small space. Eileen had never been a big fan of old, wooden stairs—not to the point of a phobia, but after seeing her aunt fall through a creaky wooden tread one summer at a beach cabin, Eileen had become wary of old-looking stairs. The way she could hear each step groan under her feet made her climb a little faster and her heart pound a little harder.

Beyond the stairway was another door and a hall lined with five rooms on either side. Eileen could hear a girl's voice crying within one of the rooms, sobbing and probably hiding from the same terrors Eileen was trying to escape.

"_Is that a kid? …Where is she?"_ Eileen thought, passing each door with a short pause to listen before moving on. Finally, she came to a stop before a door labeled, "Video Archive 4".


End file.
